Refusing to fill a growler

Caps off during storage. Keep that air flowing.

 

Yeah, you should totally clean your growler before you head out to fill it. Not just for yourself but for the place that's filling it for you. It's just good etiquette (and perhaps common sense).

That being said though, it's a nice touch when a place has a sink/growler cleaning area for you to rinse out your own growler.

 

Sanitizing with a high-ABV fill works for me

 

Probably why he "USED to be a regular."

 

So many people drink beer from the growler and then fail to rinse it on purpose. Most of them expect the brewery to do it for them before filling and that holds up the show. And if they put their beer in the dirty growler, it will taste bad. I don't blame them.

Instead, how about a thread telling nasty ass dudes to rinse your growler with hot water after you are done you lazy asses.

 

There's two bottle shops that I've gotten growler fills from. I believe they both rinse with some sort of solution before filling.

I always wash my growlers out the best I can, and rinse with really hot water. I let it dry and rinse with my homebrewing idouphor sanitizer and cap. I also leave it in the truck at all times.

Whenever I pull it out and open it, it still smells of the sanitizing agent, and that's good enough for me.

One shop will not use my cap, and the other one doesn't care. The same one who gives me a new cap put shrink wraps around the neck and cap. The other shop will not do that if I ask.

 

I rinse with cold water about a third full and shake it up , pour it out fill it up and pour it out. When it does not smell of beer it's "clean" to me. I let it dry out and then store open. I bring caps with me but most places give me new caps. I don't buy growlers more than a few times a year but this works well for me.

Enjoy

 

I had an odd experience a couple years ago. I had driven from California to Colorado and visited Copper Kettle which makes some really nice flavored stouts. I brought my growlers with me and said I couldn't wait to share these with my Californian friends. They refused to fill them because I was driving them back to California and in their minds the beer wouldn't be in tip-top shape due to the drive. The growlers themselves were clean and that wasn't the problem. I couldn't believe it.

 

Sounds like a pleasant New Beer Sunday afternoon that quickly turns into a day long session ending with you drunk calling your past couple ex's.

 

I had a similar incident a few years at their lancaster location. I didnt try as hard to get a fill and just went to lancaster brewing instead. although they told me it was the brewery policy, never mentioned anything about the PA laws.

fwiw, Iron Hill (in Lancaster) will now (or a least last year) fill any growler.

 

to those who say the dirty growlers should be filled, you should think that many times growlers are shared with others. filling a dirty growler could affect the new beer inside, which would potentially give the brewery a bad rap, when actually it has nothing to do with them.

 

i was at troegs a few years ago near christmas. there was this older man who brought in a once used filp top growler covered in mold, inside and outside. apparently he got it the year before for a family party, and just sealed the glass and put it in a basement closet. it was a hit at the party so he wanted to get it re-filled. the bartender was very polite and patient but refused to fill it for him. he was persistent but she wouldnt budge. eventually he bought a new growler. he offered me the moldy growler but i declined, another patron accepted it.

 

Was told by a guy at a local homebrew store that bleach can actually eat small pits in the glass which would create hard to clean areas that "bugs" and such would grow. so may not be a good idea to use bleach, although beer is typically only in a grower for a day or two (likely less) so it may not be much of an issue

 

Don't have any (recent) ex's, but after a growler like that I might

 

Straight bleach might pit glass. The solution that is recommended for homebrewing to clean and sanitize uses one capfull of bleach for 5 gallons of water. I have a glass car boy that is 25 years old, and that has had many bleach solution soaks with no problems. Stainless steel is another story, no bleach there!

 

Brewery should have to right to reject some customers due to people not conforming to reasonable policy. Example many places has no shirt, no shoe no service policy. As long as the employees are polite, I don't see an issue. In this case, the Brewery could have offer to clean the growler for a fee and earn a few more bucks and allowed the customer get his beer. That way, it's not the Brewery rejecting a customer, it's a customer not wanting to pay for a service.

 

Sometimes water and soap aren't enough- one time I filled 2 old, hot water and soap cleaned growlers with bulk maple syrup and left one in my beer cellaring spot for nearly a year. When it was opened, it had clearly fermented from remaining microbes and gushed up into this beautiful, sticky, lightly alcoholic foam. Happiest accident from a funky growler ever- the stuff was so delicious! But it proved that a simple cleaning just wasn't enough.

I've also heard many horror stories about year-old beer (half-filled Goose Island IPA left in a car trunk for a year, anyone?) being left in growlers brought in for refills. Those were ALWAYS exchanged and the offending growlers tossed into recycling... with some gentle reminders passed to the patrons that cleanliness affects beer flavor, and if you don't drink it within a week, dump and clean that vessel, please.

But unless I'm going to Hill Farmstead or Fiddlehead, I don't even bother with growlers anymore. Pretty much everyone here offers up cans or crowlers anyway.

 

What constitutes a dirty growler? Asking for a friend.

 

You should have said, "I changed my mind, I'm going to share them all with my Colorado friends tomorrow. Yeah, tomorrow, that's the ticket."