Thoughts on Infections

How do you feel about one that realizes the batch is infected, puts a new label on the beer, and markets it as a "wild" or "sour" version of the beer?

 

At the same time, they keep releasing infected batches and selling what they can...

 

That's called damage control.

Right now up until this point Dan Weyerbacher has acted like Bill Cosby, dude said nothing and shook his head.

 

I give Deschutes credit for doing this after the infected 2009 vintage.

 

This is the problem with the buy local philosophy. Too many sing the praises of the local option, even if it is bad.

 

Don't get me wrong, but I am curious - what else of central waters has been infected? I haven't come across any others that had a bad batch of infected beers and I am a pretty big fan. I mean, I didn't like their cherry barred stout, but I didn't like the tart cherry flavor - I didn't think it was soured

 

Don't know of any outside of three straight years of Peruvian Morning. But three straight years?!?!

 

Guess I'm not the only one who had problems with Weyerbacher... I bought a single of Heresy a few months ago that was absolutely awful. Extremely tart and acidic aftertaste - had my dad taste it and it reminded him of bile. I tweeted the brewery and filled out their contact form with the relevant info (bottling dates, place of purchase). They never got back to me. Haven't bought anything from them since.

 

Nothing more hilarious than The Bruery White Chocolate reviews. I recommend everyone read them for a chuckle; some are very are impressed with how well the white chocolate pairs with tartness and some realize what's going on and are very, very upset over it.

 

Personally if my friend has made a beer that was spoiled / infected, I would be a bit disappointed. If I had paid for a beer that was infected, I would be furious and expect my money back. You can't be expected to simply 'deal' with a beer from a professional brewery being undrinkable. To suggest that it is someone else's fault due to the facilities etc is simply not good enough.

 

Agreed it isn't great but they have recalled and owned the problem. My understanding of the recall this year is they said they might not make it anymore because of the issue?

 

Have you run into this with new and small-ish breweries? If so, how'd the discussion go? How receptive were they to criticism? I know a couple brewers around town that would be cool with me pointing out an off taste, but they actually know me and know that I understand beer. I'd wonder if a brewmaster that was a stranger to me would take offense or question my knowledge before questioning the quality.

Just curious about any encounter you've had. That's all.

 

care to name or hint the brewery?

 

I think it's important in these types of threads that "infection" is a defined term. At my brewery, we have had contaminations, but never anything that made the beer sour that went out the door. At one point, we had a major issue with our yeast supplier giving us yeast cultures that were contaminated with a different subspecies of yeast. The beer would taste good upon its release and then a few months later, bottles were over carbonated and phenolic. We assumed we had a contaminant in the brewery and we had our beers tested. They came back clean. It took us a long time to find out that what we actually had was a contamination with a separate subspecies (Diastaticus) which is much harder to detect than bacteria because it looks pretty much the same as normal ale yeast, just smaller. Commonly, I would see people refer to those beers as "infected" but they don't have the typical flavors associated with infections (Sour, Diacetyl, yogurt, etc.)

From our experience, it is actually not very easy to get a contaminant from a bourbon barrel if it is a freshly emptied barrel. However, if the barrel dries out, than it opens the door for bacteria to contaminate the barrel.

I suppose that due to my own experience at my brewery, I am more lenient and willing to give second chances to brewers. I typically give some time before samplings and pay attention to the dates on the bottles to make sure that the brewery has had time to learn they had a problem and address the issue. If the beer has the same problem, than I'm done with it, but it is crucial to check dates on the bottles. Last month I received a complaint about one of our beers, it turns out it was bought off reputable dealer's shelf a year after it was bottled. The distributor thought they had shipped it all back to us when we attempted to recall it, but apparently a few cases got mixed in with a good pallet of beer in their warehouse and they didn't catch it (One of the greatest frustrations of just about every craft brewery I know).

 

They didnt know it at the time, but they figured out the issue and have fixed it. They had infected lactose, believe it or not. I just had a few bottles a month ago, and its perfectly fine now.

 

As usual, TongoRad has hit the nail on the head. If you're gonna start experimenting with wild yeast, you either need to do it in a completely separate facility or, if you introduce it to the same building where you brew all your other beers and on the same equipment, you need to clean every centimeter of the equipment from top to bottom, left to right, every nook and cranny ten times over...and then clean it again. Even breweries like Cigar City, whose team knows what they're doing, cleaned the living shit (pun intended) out of all their equipment when they knew there could be a possibility of contamination since they were messing with wild yeast. Still, an entire batch of Cubano Espresso got infected. I know because I bought a 4-pack and knew something was wrong with it and later heard the story. This was back in 2012 and they have since resolved the issue as far as I know. The point being, the decision to start utilizing wild yeast is one of the most important decisions a brewery can make because you run the risk of ruining batches of beer. Any brewery who takes this lightly is not a brewery that should be taken seriously by consumers.

 

i concur with pretty much what has already been said. If a brewery cannot put out a clean beer, they shouldn't be brewing. It doesn't matter whether its a "fledgling" barrel program or not. Gotta walk before you run, and barrel-aged beers are an advanced brewing technique. They need to own up to it and recall their beer, or better yet, not release an infected beer in the first place.

 

I've never confronted a brewery about QC since I've only run into it a few times from a specific brewery in my area and otherwise not at all. You can look to my other lost here about the experience I witnessed when they were contronted with the issue, however. In a nutshell, they brushed it off as not a big deal.

Central Waters, an established brewery obviously, has had infamous infection issues in the past, and they have always, as far as I'm aware, given refunds to anyone who asked.

It's weird because identifying off-flavors is not something all drinkers are knowledgeable enough to do, so a hypothetical brewer kind of does have grounds to question people's perceived off-flavors. For instance, New Glarus is ubiquitous here in WI, and brewmaster Dan Carey had on multiple occasions had to explain why a beer was sour or highly carbed. He is a master of brewing to style and quality control, but the masses of WI don't know the styles he sometimes brews and so question him. I would imagine this gets annoying having to deal with uneducated people (especially when their answers as to why a beer tastes the way it does are only a Google search away these days).

What I'm saying is that not all brewers/breweries will be receptive to off-flavor criticism because they question the "credentials" of those making the claims, but if a beer is unquestionably infected, the brewery owes its customers to make it right.

 

You haven't lived until you've had 3 infected beers blended together to form a Voltron of infection:
http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/4738/116342

 

Seems like if you have an infected batch, you should solve the problem before putting out two more infected batches. I'm not trying to single out Central Waters, but they are the only brewery of which I am aware that released a new batch before solving the problem. I give them credit for recalling/refunding, but they really should have solved the problem first.