Refunds for 2015 Regular BCBS and 2015 Prop

Wow! Why didn't I think of that?

 

Probably because there's something on the label about it developing for up to five years in the bottle. Be it flavors or infections I suppose.

 

10/21 BCBS was released in Orlando as well. I have two of them... Will try tonight and confirm.

 

A review is supposed to be entirely about the beer, I'm with you there although in reality brewery bias is rampant in almost all reviews.

Regarding this situation, if a beer is potentially turning than a review is about the only way of notifying people about the issue. Nothing wrong with reviewing it in my opinion, but I do think it gets to the point of unfairness if the brewery issues a national refund campaign and admits infection; that's the point where you shouldn't review, instead you should follow the return process/renumeration process.

 

Just...no. Frankly, this position is ridiculous.

Reviews posted today/tomorrow could help traders...& that's not just a theoretical, since they've helped me in the past. That statement is simply wrong.

Reviews are NOT an evaluation of how a beer is "intended" because then an infected beer, a diacetyl bomb, or wort that the brewer pissed in would never get reviewed. You really want nobody to review crap like Green Flash's Silva Stout, trade for one/buy one in a store, only to then find out it's undrinkable & you just wasted $20? I don't. Unless Green Flash - an excellent brewery in my book - "intended" to brew a shit beer, I didn't drink what they intended. So this statement, too, is 100% incorrect.

 

Yes, so let people who have never reviewed the beer before give their honest impression of what they taste. And I'm sorry, I hate to throw the whole "GI is part of a massive conglomerate now" thing out there, but they have the ability to offer refunds if they know something is genuinely wrong with their product. There's a small brewery in my neck of the woods who will remain nameless who released a limited beer that's now known to be infected but I would never request a refund from them because they simply cannot take that kind of financial blow. Would I post a review that indicates it might be infected? If they at least acknowledge the infection and apologize, no. If they act like nothing is wrong with the beer, yes. I hate to be all double standard-y but beer should be viewed like food. If I open a can of Bumble Bee tuna and it's rotten unlike all the other delicious cans I've had in the past, I'm going to want my money back. If the folks at Bumble Bee ignore my e-mail, I'm gonna switch to Starkist. If I buy a package of local hand-canned tuna from a privately owned small company in Florida when I'm on vacation and I get home and it's putrid, I'm gonna chalk it up as a loss since they probably don't have the kind of QC Bumble Bee has. But I'm still gonna write a review on Tuna Advocate that the tuna I sampled for the first time from this company was garbage and that hopefully I'll get a chance to try their product again to see if it was an isolated incident. And don't you dare say this is convoluted!

 

You may or may not be right about that being the "standard framework" for reviews. As others have pointed out, the language leaves room for interpretation, so I supposed Todd or Jason would need to weigh in there. But let's assume you're correct, which you may well be. If your position is, "well rules are rules, so we should review according to guidelines," fair enough. However, I simply disagree with the rule if that is what it is intended to convey. The reason the brewer's reaction matters is because the rule speaks to the brewer's intention. If you report a problem and are told to pound sand, then apparently the brewer is fine with the quality of the beer and it should be rated accordingly. It shouldn't be up to individual reviewers to decide to go against the brewer's own position as to the quality of the beer and refrain from reviewing because they personally believe it to be infected despite having been told by the brewer that it isn't.

And to go a bit further, I may have overstated my position earlier--I said I "may" feel differently if the brewer reacted appropriately. But upon further reflection, I'm not sure I would. As a consumer of beer, I would still like reviews to reflect the actual quality of the beer as it exists in its actual form in commerce, not some hypothetical way it could taste (but doesn't) based upon past vintages. Reviews should provide useful information to consumers, not exist as a lifetime achievement award for beers that are no longer good. Perhaps the best solution would be to split off vintages to allow for honest reviews, i.e. the 2015 BCBCS ends up with a 1.5 because it tastes like shit, but other years could still be rated highly.

 

Maybe Inbev sent the product out in a bulk container and had it bottled closer to the source of distribution, maybe there was an issue on the bottling line that know one observed until it was to late. Until a problem is acknowledged by the brewery it is all speculation but it is kind of funny that it all happened in and around one area.

Cheers

 

Some of the responses here indicate, to me, that some people want to punish the conglomerate for the infected beer and feel reviews are a good way to do so. Why do I think this? Write a bad review if they don't admit there may be an issue, but don't write a bad review if they demonstrate some act of contrition. Write a bad review if it's a large, wealthy brewer but not if it's a small local one.

The twisting of what the brewer intended and had control of are rather humorous as well.

 

I whole heartedly agree with your last point. I know it may be a good bit of extra work but there should be a vintages category for beers that are only released once a year and in limited batches. I know by doing this you are opening a whole can of worms and I'm sure that I will get tons of nay sayers, but it would be a cool idea for the future of the site. With the ever expanding craft beer market lots of these types of beers have been fluctuating in quality. It would just be nice to click on 2012 BCBS and see how the ratings have changed over the years and how it is doing if you have one and are debating on opening it for a share or to consume privately. You can make the argument that demand/sales will reflect quality but in the current state of affairs, limited usually means that it will fly off the shelf regardless.

I don't know how this whole BCBS thing will end up playing out but I do hope it will make GI and other larger breweries pay more attention to QC. Cigar City a few years back pulled Amplitude because of a potential inflection. At the time they were not nearly as big as GI is today and they were still able to not send a questionable beer out to market. With all the money GI has behind the name you can't tell me that they don't have the ability to do stress tests on these BA beers. Not in any way accusing them of foul play, but please utilize existing technology to prevent all of us wasting our time next year hunting these beers.

 

Not sure when your wedding is but maybe you can do a general query in a thread and see if you get any response before cracking your bottle.

Good luck

 

Is there a reason to think GI sent a questionable beer to market? BCBS was great fresh...took many months for what appears to be a very limited number of them to turn. But we're accusing them of sending questionable beer out to the market? I'm no GI fanboy, but that seems a bit extreme.

 

If this is limited to a specific part of Florida, this could be a distributor issue with storage before they were sent to retailers.

 

I'm leaning towards siding with GI on this one and giving them the benefit of the doubt. Here's what we know:

Roughly 35k-40k cases of regular BCBS were made/sold (depends what article you read), x12 = around 450k-480k bottles. 7 months after it's released, there's 10(ish) bottles on a BA thread that were bad, 7 from the same person (which would make me wonder about his storage practices/palate, could be great but it's...suspicious)

So, roughly .002% of bottles have had a concern raised in roughly 210 days and GI hasn't admitted fault yet? Meh, if I owned the brewery I wouldn't be too concerned either.

 

I opened a second bottle last night. also infected. Stored in a fridge since time of purchase (so the only time at room temp was while being distributed and waiting to be sold at the store).

Both bottles I have had were 21OCT. From the same stores as Mxracercam. I have had at least half a dozen bottles that were not infected or not yet exhibiting off flavors. All were from different bottling dates (and consumed much closer to time of release)

 

Yeah, I think the time period is a big issue. The first we've heard of this infection happens to be more than half a year after the beer was released? At that point, either A) something has happened to the beer in the last 7 months (whether it's a distribution/store issue or a GI issue, who knows or B) no one purchasing the "bad" batches drank one/spoke up for 7 months.

It's hard to make an argument, at least off of this thread, that GI should be responding to this. The beer certainly is claimed to "develop" for up to 5 years in the bottle, but that doesn't mean that under EVERY circumstance it will do so.

 

...but the prop is going sour too...just check out some of the recent untapped posts or fb trading groups

 

Most of those variables can't be used. BA is not the majority of BCBS purchasers. Also, this "bug" may take 10+ months to develop off-flavors. Therefore, .002% is nowhere near a factual representation of this issue. I do hope it's a small error, but a lot of evidence in this thread is point to an issue in Florida with 10/21 bottles.

 

I agree here. When reviewing a beer I believe to be infected I write my thoughts and overall score in the comments section and do not leave an actual rating for the beer which still spreads the knowledge of the infection/issues. If there are good bottles and bad bottles out there, rating the infected bottles with a low score will drive down the rating for the otherwise good bottles and how the beer is meant to taste.

 

Let me say I'm by no means claim to be an expert with a refined palate. I'll relate my experience. I was able to get a few extra bottles of regular BCBS this year and thought I'd have some fun. A month or so ago I opened one, put a vanilla bean in it, recapped it and put it in the refrigerator for a couple days. It tasted fantastic. Last weekend I did it again and invited a few friends over. ALL of them asked if I put cherries in it. It did not taste like last time, it wasn't undrinkablue, but something was not right. We all agreed I shouldn't do that again. I figured it was because of me screwing around with...because..well that is what you get what you experiment. Sometimes you get bad results....and it was on me. Then I see this thread today. I don't know the bottle date as the bottle has long gone by now. I'll see if I can pull it out of my bag of empties and get a date. I got a few bottles from trades, so I don't know where it came from.