Refunds for 2015 Regular BCBS and 2015 Prop

Reviews are about what you experience in a beer you drink, and should be designed to give that info honestly to others who read it. Period.

Doesn't matter if the brewery did everything in their power to prevent and check for infection, or if they open fermented in the same room they ground grain, once the beer is out the door it is what it is and the review of the beer also needs to only reflect what that beer is, nothing else.

 

I'm confused as to why some people find it so hard to believe there is an issue, or are so quick to minimize the issue or criticize consumers, distributors, or retailers for storage issues, given that we already have a 100% confirmed, widespread infection of two other variants. Is it that hard to wrap your head around the possibility that regular BCBS also has an issue but that it may have taken longer to develop? Many people have stated the beer was stored cold yet still infected. And even if it wasn't stored cold, a good stout doesn't just turn to shit because it sat on a shelf at 75 degrees for a few months.

And stop saying it was released 7 months ago (which still wouldn't be that long). It was bottled then. It was released on black Friday, barely more than 4 months ago, certainly not an unreasonable time to hang onto a BA stout and expect it not to be a mess...or to expect that the brewer would own up to it being a mess once discovered.

 

While I agree with this @Todd has gone on record saying to not review infected beers and to report any reviews of infected beers. I believe it is not in our best interests as beer advocates to avoid reviewing infected beers as it prevents us from indicating there is a problem, but rules is rules.

edit, I also find it humorous that InBev and goose island both went on record when goose island was bought out saying that this acquisition was going to ensure that goose island was going to be able produce higher quality beers.

 

Getting closer and closer.

 

Just wanted to say thank you to @GatorLCA for the post and @mxracercam for backing it up. Appreciate the heads up. Sadly, the other 5 pages have now evolved into at least one or 2 topics that have nothing to do with the original intent of the post.

 

This all makes me think that it's about time to make a separate BCBCS, BCBS, and BCBBW addition to "Beers" for this '15 vintage just like every year of Prop. This way we can see what this years ratings/reviews are and it won't taint the current ratings of past vintages. Fair???

 

Thanks for clarifying Todd.
Shelf spoilage like a beer being light struck would be more along those lines than infection.

 

Reviews exist to provide personal feedback on a beer. That's all. If someone wants to write a review, it should be under their own terms. People already say "take BA reviews with a grain of salt" and in this case it's no different. If one person writes a bad review for Fou Fone while everyone else gives it glowing recommendations, it's obviously an outlier due to that person's personal taste. If more and more people start giving the beer bad reviews within the same timeframe, intuition tells us that there might be something off in that batch. One person's review is just that: one voice explaining their experience in their own words under their own code of ethics regarding what the brewer had intended. A cluster of reviews all pointing at the same thing then becomes the voice of the collective. I'm simply saying people should review the beer under their own personal terms and standards, then let the accumulation of reviews reflect what's going on with that beer. That's why I ALWAYS indicate whether or not the bottle I'm reviewing has a freshness date and, if there is, what that date is. That way, if it turns out that batch was off, everyone who is aware of that knows why I experienced what I experienced. You can give suggestions on how to review a beer regarding what the brewer intended or didn't intend, but at the end of the day it's up to the reviewer to share their experience or keep quiet. I think that, given the current construct of the way beers are categorized on BA (meaning no vintage designation) people have every right to review a vintage even if it is obviously infected. After all, in the wine world, do people take into account the winemaker's intentions if there's a vintage that's not as good as others? Hell no. They know what the intentions were, it was simply a bad year for that wine. I think the same should ring true with beer when what we're talking about, after all, are factors beyond the brewer's control: wild yeast and bacteria, just like the factors that are beyond the winemaker's control: weather that affects the grape harvest.

 

My only counter to this ideology is a situation like this:

Guy buys 2 year old pale ale. Hates it. Reviews it and skewers it because it tastes bad. Unbeknownst to him, it's widely accepted that fresh batches are delicious. Where is the "common sense" line drawn? Should one offs be handled differently.

Also, unrelated...but

Florida is going hard in the paint on this one.

 

I'm open to better ideas for sample size, since you didn't offer any, I assume you don't have any. The back of the envelope numbers I presented suggest to me, with the addition of my own experience, that there isn't a problem of any significance. The inability to know exact scientific figures doesn't mean that it isn't reasonable to make some logical assumptions based on the limited data we do have.

We have already seen that GI (unlike many craft brewers) are willing to make these problems right when there is enough reason to, so my 4 remaining bottles of regular BCBS and I aren't terribly concerned.

 

Im starting to regret the case I recently purchased

 

Seems like as good a reason as any to call the wedding off.

 

Valid point & this is how it should be handled IMHO: if someone knowingly buys & rates a two year old pale with a clear bottled/canned date on it, that person is a jackass. If the brewer doesn't date their cans/bottles & the buyer has no way to know how old the beer is, that's on the brewer.

There's your common sense...from me, at least.

 

I popped a bottle purchased in the baltimore area last night. I believe it's in the early stages of infection. It was still enjoyable.

Carbonation was much higher than normal, slight metallic / iron taste, a smidge of rancid fruit.

 

The issue with your wine analogy is that the winemaker making wine in a year with less than optimal grapes probably has a good idea that's going to be the case before it's ever even fermented, and almost certainly when it's bottled.

On the other hand, if there are off flavors that are not going to develop for months after a beer is bottled, and if there's no reasonable way to test for whatever is generating the latent off flavor (I have no idea what the capabilities are here), then it's pretty hard to lay that on the brewery. I'm not saying that's what happened here because we simply don't know. I feel it's pretty reasonable to assume that GI didn't release a beer they know people are aging knowing that it was going to develop off flavors. I just don't see that happening. If people here want to believe that...that's certainly their prerogative.

I guess you could expect all breweries to cellar their bottled beer for 6-12 months before releasing....

 

Well...when you've bought a case or two or three because you love the beer and want be able to drink it year round and have bottle for future verts/aging...you go hard. Because it sucks.

 

I don't think anyone is saying GI did this deliberately in order to fuck people. At least, I'm certainly not saying that. I assume they released this beer with good intentions thinking it was great as always. In fact, in the case of regular BCBS, it actually was quite good at first. But when dozens of reports surface of hundreds of different bottles of BCBS being infected, I also don't think it behooves the brewery to blow those people off and act like they're are all wrong or that it must have been "storage" (which is, quite simply, horseshit). Especially when they already had to eat crow on a massive scale with other variants the same year, it isn't a huge leap to assume this may indeed be a legitimate issue. In which case, I lay it entirely on the brewery and would expect them to address it. They did address the prior infection, for which I applauded them, which makes the current stonewalling that much more puzzling. In fairness, this seems to be a fairly recent issue, so hopefully they will change their tune, but the early responses people have received when they called Goose are not encouraging.

 

The question I pose to people with infected prop 15's is... Have you called GI as well? I know most people in FL who have had infected BCBS have but I obviously cannot speak for everyone.

 

"Dozens of reports of hundreds of different bottles" of regular BCBS? Did I miss something other than the 4 guys reporting 14 or so bottles in this thread?

Something tells me people wouldn't be nearly so eager to pile on if this wasn't GI...