Replacing an infected bottle?

If they care about repeat customers and their reputation I’d hope so

 

I'm sure most would. However If you buy the bottle from a store and not the brewery, then it needs to be replaced by them...Which I believe is where things get complicated.

EDIT: seems like I remember reading something about that on the Infected: autumn maple 2012 thread.

 

I have had infected beer that my bottle shop has replaced. Granted, they know me and know that I know beer. They let me swap it the remainder of the 4 pack for something else.

 

If ones bottle is infected/corked and one bought it at a retailer they will often exchange it for a like bottle. However, if one is wanting to exchange it for another beer/wine, them it will appear to be a question of taste. Retailers are not responsible for someone liking the taste of something and shouldn't have to take a loss for ones dislike of a product. Be sure to keep your receipt so the retailer knows it came from their store.

If you're knowledgable of the product you're drinking and know it has gone bad, then by all means take it back for an exchange.

 

BMC companies usually have an 800 complaint number on cans and labels. Operators will document complaints for QC analysis and send complainants coupons to replace the bad beer. This enables the beer company to keep tabs on quality trends, keep customers happy and keep the store out of the problem.
There may be laws in some or many states that prevent stores from exchanging good bottles for bad bottles. In fact, the laws in some states prevent distributors from replacing bad product with good product.

 

Since shipping beer is stricter than shipping wine, a lot of breweries cannot ship beer to you so they ship stemware or swag instead.

 

I was wondering what people generally do when they run into an infected bottle? I had one last night, and was wondering if I should contact the brewer/the store/post on BA to warn others? Thoughts?

 

I always wondered that too, especially a company like Central Waters, who seems to brew more infected BBA stouts than they do consumable ones.

 

Contact the brewery. i would include a bottling date or batch number if possible.

 

AFAIK Central Waters has had only one stout (Peruvian Morning) that's been infected out of all the barrel-aged beers they put out – what others have you found?

 

The Bruery sent me a refund check after I reported an infected autumn maple.

 

I have offered to buy people beer at my taproom when I have gotten complaints (not just a contamination as we have not had a contaminant that we are aware of, but other problems such as gushing, stale, or oxidized-even though we put dates on the labels), but I will not ship beer due to legal concerns. If someone is far away, I give them my phone number and tell them to call me if they are ever in town and if they are close they sometimes take me up on it, sometimes they just want to complain, tell me my beer is shit, and cuss me out.

 

It was mentioned above that you can't take something back to the store just because you don't like the taste of the beer, so if it is infected then the success of any return or exchange could likely depend on whether the brewery has been made aware of the issue and has acknowledged it. Acknowledgement can take the form of the brewery contacting the wholesaler and then they contact the retailer. Credit for the bad beer from the retailer and upward thru the distributor is probably easier if the brewery admits to a problem. Otherwise the retailer gets stuck for the cost of this bad beer and any refund of exchange is in the name of customer relations.

The question was asked in a post above about who to tell if a beer is bad. You need to settle this issue by starting at the retailer, but I think at least an e-mail needs to be sent to the brewery so that they can take a proactive stance to get the bad beer out of the stores and minimize any damage to their reputation before the bad beer gets 'discovered' by too many customers. So, the earlier you do it, then the better it is to contact the brewery.