Traded for a cherry rye...think I got a home brew

You'd think with InBev's backing Goose Island would be able to afford bottle caps that didn't require duct tape.

 

I can't say if you got a fake brew or not, but I have had many bottles comes to be with duct tape around the cap, I have seen quite a few breweries that don't have the tightest caps and I usually wrap with electrical tape, but I guess if you don't have any of that...

 

Something like this did actually happen to me in a trade. At least, as far as i can tell anyway. I scored a bottle of Leon a while back and absolutely loved it, so i made another trade months later when I had enough beer that people were actually interested in. The second bottle I ended up with was a complete salt bomb, something that I've never tasted in any beer before. I've definitely come across infected beer (both in stores and my own homebrew) and I don't know what the hell was up with that bottle, but it was hideous. Anyway, not saying anyone did actually tamper with the bottle but the taste was so irregular and unlike any other infected beer I'd tasted in the past that my mind naturally wanted to assume it was some other liquid in there. I'm not sure what happened, honestly. Anyway, sorry to hear.

 

I've bought a couple bombers of 2012 BCBCS off craigslist that must have been filled back up with regular BCBS. No hint of coffee at all. People do shitty stuff. On the upside I did get some more BCBS but pretty damn expensive bombers of it.

 

I always electric tape un-waxed bottles for safe shipping. Thankfully I've never run into someone recapping a beer on me.

 

that's crazy. I have a capper for homebrewing but how did they get a GI cap back on there? I would think it would look all screwy.

sorry OP

 

Tape means nothing. I send/receive bottles with tape on them all the time. You also really can't compare Cherry Rye today versus a while back and expect them to be the same beer. How long ago did you last have Cherry Rye?

As a homebrewer, brewing a high gravity beer with the body and ABV of BCBS is very difficult and expensive. I can hardly imagine spending the time and money to brew a beer anywhere near BCBS and then trade it away. Especially for Cherry Rye, which doesn't trade for that much. If I was going to go through that level of effort, I would throw in some cheap bourbon and call it a Rare. In fact, if I wanted to cheat someone, I would just buy some Old Rasputin, add bourbon, and call it Rare. Why bother with all the trouble of making a homebrew.

The one thing that would have helped to determine whether this is an original Cherry Rye or re-bottled was the type and condition of the cap. Cherry Rye has a logo'd cap. Did your bottle have a logo'd cap? When you untapped it, did the cap fall off, or was it crimped on their pretty good?

 

You should've taken a picture of it when you got it. I'm sure the hounds would've been all over it.

 

Wowww, I so hope that isn't true. Something else to worry about in trading ayy?

IIRC there was a case that some rare Cantillons were being faked using classic Gueuze and fake labels a couple years back.

 

Ever wonder why they sell new bottle caps on Ebay?

 

In sort of related news but on a much larger scale, there was a guy who figured out how to make labels and everything one would need to fake REALLY expensive older vintage wine. He finally got caught but my recollection was only after he ripped people off for hundreds of thousands and that's a conservative number. Needless to say he's doing a lot of time. I saw a show about it a month or so ago.

 

It's not very difficult to use a knife or small screwdriver to spread open a few flutes on the crown, pop the cap and re-use it by crimping it back on a bottle with a capper. Lots of bottle collectors do it routinely.

 

This makes me more inclined to suspect poor storage conditions rather than counterfeiting.

 

Totally agree! I believe storage is the number 1 reason for bottle variance. In trading, you really can never be 100% sure where that bottle has been or how many hands its passed through

 

That was my first thought as well.