Refunds for 2015 Regular BCBS and 2015 Prop

October 21. Wine like smell as soon as bottle opened. Slight sour edge. Not typical BCBS.

 

Oct 1. 1434 bought in Minnesota, 13.7% seemed like early signs of being infected. Sour cherry aromas, tasted nothing like it did in the beginning. Two others sharing the bottle with me held the same opinion, they both have had it previously as well.

 

Nov 10
0951
14.3%

Gloriously normal

 

I have reached out to Goose Island twice. First time was after I opened my second 21OCT15 bottle that was obviously infected/off flavors (and was also the same time that I started a thread about it and this thread started up). This was their response:

Hello Jason,


Thanks for writing in. After testing all of them, our brewers determined that the only variants that demonstrated off-flavors were Coffee and BW. However, if your regular BCS is tasting off, I take your word for it! I’ll make sure to pass your feedback along to our brewers. Thanks for dropping us a line.

Cheers,

Adam
Your Friend at Goose Island
1-800-Goose-Me (1-800-466-7363)
www.GooseIsland.com

​

I contacted them again 2 days now that I had more information (and had opened another 10 infected bottles of 21OCT15). I specifically linked to this thread and mentioned the number of reviews on Untappd of other people experiencing the same things. I mentioned that they should look at the 21OCT15 bottles since those make up the largest amount of reported issues. Here was the response I got back yesterday:

Hello Jason,

We take all claims of infection or off-taste very seriously. We appreciate your e-mail, and want you to know we are looking into it. Our quality assurance and quality control processes are critical to the complex portfolio of beers we release each year and we hold them to a very high standard. Thanks for taking the time to write in.

Cheers,

Adam
Your Friend at Goose Island
1-800-Goose-Me (1-800-466-7363)
www.GooseIsland.com
​

So, I guess we've made some progress because their response had gone from saying there is nothing wrong to saying they are looking into it. I highly recommend that anyone that has posted in this thread about having a bad bottle take the time to email or call GI.

 

Great work, way to stay on top of this!!!!

 

Ok I did t want to believe this at all. I had a case of regular bourbon county bottled Oct 26. I drank all the bottles but one which I opened last night. This bottle was kind of forgotten about and stored in a closet and it had a very distinct sour taste and metallic taste to it. All the previous 11 bottles were fine the last of those was drank over a month ago. So I don't know if the sour taste is slowly starting to develop. I even opened a 2014 BC after this and tried them side by side and they were completely different. The 2014 tasted like chocolate and bourbon and the 2015 just had a weird sour taste to it.

 

Starting to get nervous, so I went and checked all my bottles last night. Luckily, none are from the dreaded 10/21 bottling date, but obviously there have been reports from other dates as well.

Of my seven remaining bottles (I started out with 15 bottles and have drank, traded or given away the others), four were bottled in September. I'm going to be cautiously optimistic that those are safe for sitting on for awhile since I haven't seen any reports of bad bottles from prior to October bottling. I'd love to hear if anyone has seen/heard anything different.

The other three were bottled in early November. Sounds like I may want to stick those in the fridge and drink them sooner than later just to be save.

All bottles purchased in Lawrence, Kansas btw.

 

solid effort.

i would assume/bet that's the same "Adam" that use to occasionally log in to BA & interact with us on GI related stuff on the older/previous version of this forum.

 

Thanks. I'm kinda of staying with it because all told (between purchase and trade) I had 3 full cases of regular BCBS and about another mixed case of the variants/barleywine. Last night I went through a full case of 21OCT15 and each and every one was infected. I still have another 12 bottles of 21OCT15 bottles sitting in my fridge right now...trying to figure out what to do with them.

 

I'd contact GI and tell them the issue you had with the last case, and rather than accuse them see if they'd be willing to have a few of the suspected bad bottles shipped to them. Might suck to lose a few bottles but in the long run (assuming they're bad as well) it's best for everybody both now and in future brews if they get actual evidence of the problem rather than reports of infection and the evidence down the drain.

 

Keep checking in hoping that the list of infected bottles isn't growing. I've got around 15 bottles... time to check dates.

 

I have contacted them. Emailed twice, called twice, reached out on social media. I'd didn't "accuse" them any of the times I've reached out to them. I was polite each time. The second time I emailed: I included all the information I had, directed them to this thread and the untappd reviews, and offered to send them bottles. You can see their response above

 

Honestly, I think you have to give them credit for seemingly changing their stance (or being in the process of doing so). My assumption is that the complaints aren't super widespread, so I would think it'd be easy for them to just say "listen guys, step up your palate game" or "quit keeping your beer on a sunlit windowsill," etc. Hopefully they'll figure out a way to make this right for the people affected, and hopefully in the meantime, no one loses their mind about how much "GI sucks!" (not accusing anyone).

 

Wasn't trying to claim you were accusing, more suggesting a different approach to work with them, offering to help them understand the problem, rather than most that simply yell at them. I don't see your message to them but if you say you offered to help I'll take your word for it. From their side you know there have to be many people daily complaining at them with something. You can see from other infection threads that once the word of infection begins, people tend to pile on, correct or not. After the Barleywine and Coffee fiasco you know there are people who smell blood in the water and simply would want money back.

But their 2nd response at least seems like some sort of change of stance as mentioned above. That's at least a start. Would be nice to see them offer to take a bottle or two back from you for testing.

 

I'm going to email GI and see if i can drop off one of the off tasting beers from the case I picked up in MN. I'm assuming they have tons for QA/cellar/etc, but it can't hurt to reach out and try. I live pretty close so this will probably be quicker than sending from FL. I still think they should get some from the 10/21 distro to the SE as this seems to have the highest/quickest turn rate of 15 regular.

 

They might be more open to that. I think they are hesitant to accept the offer of me sending one from Florida because of the issue with the legality of mailing beer (not technically illegal for Fedex and UPS...but still against their terms of service)

 

The one I opened last night was 30SEP and was starting to develop off flavors as well

 

Noooooooooooooooo

 

Taking four of mine to Home Brew Club tonight, while they still are good. Figure tonight is gonna be a good time for a repeat discussion about infections in beer, how hard it is to spot them even by pros with labs, what kinds there are, and how to prevent them.

 

Sounds like a great idea! Hoping to hear a summary of what you folks come up with, especially what things can happen that might look/taste like an infection but that actually result from some other problem/causes.