Sour Crap

yea and it be nice if they had things like beer 101 and folks read them. what would really rock would be lists of the top beers so everyone could stop asking what the favorite beer of the minute was. Might have room for more serious questions... maybe

but seriously its 8 bucks live and learn and get over it.

I don't have a smart phone either, but one should know what they like...before hand.

 

Now your implying I'm an idiot, which again isn't necessary.
It doesn't matter if your group new it was a sour, that's not the point at all. The point is the beer has no indication of being sour whatsoever, so unless your can check BA on the fly, which a lot of people can't, you have no way of knowing this.

Now you guys blast him for not checking the review first? I say it's the breweries fault for making an infected batch.
It's ludicrous to say shame on him for not reading the review first, the batch is obviously infected.

I don't understand how you all can say he should have known. Not everyone reads BA reviews before they buy a beer, nor should they have to.

When I buy a new beer I go by the style and a Biere de Garde SHOULD NOT BE SOUR!
If I got an IPA that was sour I'd probably make a post about it too just to let people know.

BA reviews are not always accurate anyways.

 

It even says in the BA description that it is Funky. I have no sympathy. You're clearly new to beer as you expect everything to be written on the label. I guess you're not familiar with all the beers that barely have a label to begin with. Make some attempt to find out what a beer is about before slamming it because you didn't know what you were getting into.

 

Who the heck checks BA reviews before every beer they buy? Not everyone bases their beer purchases on BA reviews, I know I sure as hell don't.
And the bottle in question is clearly labeled a biere de garde WHICH SHOULDN'T BE SOUR! I don't understand what is so hard to understand about that.
I think we can all agree he deserves a refund for getting an infected beer.

 

You are assuming that styles that brewers label their beer as mean anything. They don't. The few Biere de Gardes I've had have all been funky. The self-described styles are so off that this brew is labelled as a barleywine by BA and RB... and A LOT of people (especially BAs) check BA before they buy a beer.

It's fine to realize you made a mistake by not checking, but to expect that every beer is going to label all the characteristics of their beer accurately on the label is just insane.

 

So your saying don't expect a beer to taste a certain way based on it's style? Isn't that what the word style means? To expect it to taste a certain style? What's the point of even having styles then?
Hell I can go get a stout that's yellow then.

To expect someone to check BA before every beer purchase is insane IMHO. Who the hell cares about BA scores that much?
To expect a beer to taste a certain way based on it's style makes a lot more sense to me, but that's just me maybe I'm the insane one here.

Not checking BA before buying a new beer is not a mistake, the BA reviews are not gospel by a long-shot.
Selling a beer that's infected is a mistake.

 

No one is expecting people to check BA before buying a beer, but if you are going to act astonished when a beer tastes different than you expected, then yeah, you should be checking reviews beforehand, not just going off the style listed on the label. Beers don't fall neatly into styles anymore - there are too many hybrids and too many people using wild yeasts in styles that don't usually have wild yeasts. Deal with it.

It's not infected if it intentionally has wild yeast.

 

Except that the bottle the OP bought likely tasted as it was intended to taste. That beer was not infected in the sense that it was not as the brewer intended. Most of the beers Jerome from BFM makes are sour on purpose. Bon Chien is also labeled a "biere de garde." I think the issue here is that not all brewers--especially old world brewers--use terms in the same way as the BJCP here in the USA. Biere de garde literally means a beer that can be kept for a long period. It doesn't necessarily imply a flavor profile.

 

Beers may not fall into categories neatly but with something as different as tartness/sourness there should be a clear indication of this. How do we know that it's supposed to be sour otherwise?
If I had gotten this beer I wouldn't have expected it to be sour whatsoever and would come to the conclusion that it's infected.
How can we know what the brewer intends the beer to taste like unless they tell us?

 

If the brewer really wants you to know, they will label it as such, but since you really shouldn't be trusting labels, checking reviews is the best option (like I said earlier).

I, for one, am totally against what BA is doing in just labeling all American beers with wild yeast as "American Wild Ale."

 

This came up in a recent thread regarding Sam Adam's Barrel Room collection and the implications of their brewing process and subsequent classification here on BA:

http://beeradvocate.com/community/threads/wild-sam-adams-beers.29817/

Unfortunately, it's the BA community itself that drops these beers into their "appropriate" style categories and it's all too easy for people to reach for the American Wild tag when left with a total head-scratcher.

 

Look, no one is calling you an idiot, let's be clear.

I don't say that anyone has to check anything. I do say you can't go by the label. If you had more knowledge (I am not calling you an idiot, I am observing you don't have certain knowledge) you would know that Biere de Garde is the French name for Saison, it denotes an area of brewing, not some strict flavvor profile, it isn't some cut in stone style that conforms perfectly every time. Saison traditionally was a beer for the farm hands, and it traditionally ran the gamut from super funky to spicy to very tart to mild and low alcohol.

You need NONE of this knowledge if you use the EXTREMELY easy to use REVIEWS section. It isn't required. It is, however, the thing that could have avoided all the misunderstanding, all the defensiveness, and saved $8.00 for the OP, as he would have READ that the beer is SOUR. Now, you can continue to be defensive, or you can take some advice and do what smart consumers do, RESEARCH before you buy, and if you don't do the research, don't come on here later and look for sympathy chances are you won't get it. End rant. Hope you take this as helpful advice, that is what it is, no one is calling anyone an idiot, we all didn't know stuff before we learned, and we all are still learning. Cheers!

 

$8 for 330mL actually isnt that bad for what sounds like a collab between a Belgian brewery and Terrapin. thats cheap for a Belgian sour of the same size.

 

For what it's worth, BFM is Swiss, not Belgian.

 

I stick by what I said. The brewery (or breweries in this case) should be faulted for selling infected beer.

 

Not a bad price at all considering what it is, but in the end it is still $8 for a bottle of beer. Obviously the op had certain expectations of what an $8 bottle should be and those expectations were not met. The problem that has arisen is not the price, but the source of the expectations. In the end, as cavedave has already stated, we all need to be smart consumers. I have a general rule when it comes to researching purchases: I make sure to research an item in advance if it costs enough for me to get worked up over in the event that it fails to meet my expectations. In this case for the op that $8 price range is enough to get worked up over. By the way if you haven't read his review for the beer it is worth a quick peek considering that the first line is "Awww shit. Bought this off the shelf here in Georgia on a whim & scanning the reviews, it sounds like this might be sour...well, nothing to do but hope." Clearly the op had at least some idea about what it was going to taste like before opening it. I am a fan of the following line "Spike & Jerome's Cuvee Delirante should have been strangled in the cradle." this line is pure gold even if I don't agree with the rant that was posted.

 

Perhaps the label for this beer somehow got accidentally switched with Monstre Rouge from a couple of years ago which was labeled an imperial flanders red but had no hint of sour and was a terrible malt bomb. It's possible.

 

I thought that this was going to be a thread about Two Brothers Moaten

 

If I was buying a beer with BFM's name on it I would automatically assume it is going to be sour. Lots of sour beers don't say that they are sour on the bottle. Many are labeled as wild ales. That doesn't necessarily mean the beer is sour either but 80% of the people on here probably think it will be which is why you'll have people complaining that some brett fermented beer isn't sour.

 

It was worth repeating that line, I agree, and it is a rep anyone can discover for oneself by reading.

The original S&J I was privileged to try thanks to a stupidly generous trader named bulbman, it was delicious, quite tart, very interesting, as I recall. The bottle was not so good as the tap/growler, but this anyone can also discover by, well, you know, that word thing you do with your eyes.