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I have a longer post at the beer blog on the leaking box of Fred that I picked up today at the Kingston LCBO but suffice it to say, it ain't pretty. What is the email for that person at the brewery who said this was part of their plan for low carbonation?
Update: there may well be a happy ending:
Much to my surprise, the beer, picked from the worst group of ten, opens with a loud Pfffft!! The yeast had created a seal inside as you can see below to the right and it pours with a huge head. It is huge and lovely and lively. Hallelujah! Christmas is saved. Christmas is saved. And the Doggie Claws show no sign of leakage at all with the same location of the irregular capping as the Fred but with a lot less severity.
It's like Jimmy Stewart bought the beer with the last money from a Savings and Loan or something.
Good blog posting with excellent pictures. You seem rather cheerful about the whole situation. Each of the cases we bought averages out at just shy of $100. If I lose more than a few to spoilage (either already spoiled or loose enough caps to spoil soon) I'm gonna be pissed. We already know there was an issue with the capping (admitted by the brewery)...but what can we do? Complain to the LCBO? The brewery?
I guess I'm just going to join you on the "hope for the best" bandwagon.
I don't always piss in a bottle but when I do...I prefer to call it Dos Equis.
Yes, but I also expect that my post in a couple of days will hit fairly high for "Hair of the Dog" on Google - note the placement of my review of a book I read recently. I have a luxury in the capacity my servers (run by pals of mine) in this regard that other bloggers do not share so think these sort of instructive moments are important.
I'm trying to think of all the breweries with packaging problems in the 30 years I've been in this game. Let me see... oh yea, it was all of them. Anchor, UC, Sleeman, Sierra, Victory, Great Lakes, Algonquin, Bells -it has been almost a permanent problem with them - oh right, dead flat is the way it was supposed to be).
Sam Adams (good) and the other foul crap (Petes) had the advantage of QC standards and big league labs. It is not as simple as you might think and breweries that you hold up as heroes in the battle against mediocrity often don't have a clue about packaging engineering.
The game for real players is simple - 50% brewing knowledge, 50% packaging knowledge. Those who chose to ignore one because they know so much about the other, tend to show it frequently. But, they learn - the hard way. There certainly will be a book of all the horror stories that we have all experienced eventually.
At Algonquin, we had a big event (150 kegs in 3 days) that required a lot of attention. An old couple (70+ years) cornered our QC guy during the event to pull the good cop/bad cop routine. The old guy said,"I know it happens all the time but we found this bent cap in the bottle and it made him sick. His loving wife interrupted him to point out that he should remember what the lawyer said.
Our ever observant micro guy pointed out to the couple that the bent cap they showed him had complete ink coverage which is impossible if it went through a bottlewasher as all of our bottles do because the caustic soda eats most if not all of the ink off of a cap (he showed them an example at which point they really began to squirm). Yes, an elderly couple will travel from Toronto to Formosa to try and screw you.
I think I don't get your point, Rob. Are you suggesting that caps which clearly show a consistent physical miscapping is related to difficult packaging knowledge? As a lapsed home brewer I would not have accepted one bottle of such botched work by my own hand going into the cold room for fear of the stink of a leaking bottle.
With respect, you are surely not suggesting that the concerns that others have raised and I decided to document in my way about a clearly botched mechanical process have something to do with your couple trying to screw your past business life? I know that bad customers like that in the service industry is part of the deal but this has nothing to do with a bad customer. I is only about crap quality control.
Al the beerblogger wrote:I think I don't get your point, Rob.
Sorry, I tend to get off on rambles that veer quickly away from the topic.
Packaging problems are the bane of the micro industry I guess is my point and has been for the last 25 years. Many don't have packaging standards that they follow and when they do realize they have a problem, their approaches to correcting it is often flawed. Many problems are part of the industry (the old couple) and just add to ongoing packaging frustrations.
Packaging is boring, trouble filled and completely unromantic. I know a lot of brewers who put themselves 'above' packaging and will only deal with the product as far as filtration. That is a warning sign all on its own. I found out about a capping issue on 1 Litre PET bottles that we had exported many weeks after the fact. By then, the product was in Taiwan.
Ok - I get you. That is exactly the point. It is the unsexy stuff - the right caps, the right transportation, the right understanding of customs and duty rules. They all have to combine to get a fabulous product into the hands of the happy customer.
You know who is the hero so far in all this? Those sturdy little Batch 66 yeast plugging the gaps. God love 'em. They made the ale and they are keeping it good. In the end, if the Fred gets passed around at Xmas parties that is not a bad thing. I think the Doggie Claws is getting hidden away for a long sleep in the cold room...ok, maybe just 23 of them.
Al the beerblogger wrote:
You know who is the hero so far in all this? Those sturdy little Batch 66 yeast plugging the gaps. God love 'em. They made the ale and they are keeping it good. In the end, if the Fred gets passed around at Xmas parties that is not a bad thing. I think the Doggie Claws is getting hidden away for a long sleep in the cold room...ok, maybe just 23 of them.
Well the yeast in your bottles is sealing them due to the lucky mistake that your case(s) were shipped upside down...mine weren't.
I don't always piss in a bottle but when I do...I prefer to call it Dos Equis.
What % of bottles were lost? I was quite amazed that so much was save but it may be, now that I think about it, that they were only upside down in the LCBO here. Otherwise you would think any that lost say all of the neck would have emptied right out.
I don't know how many are lost at present. I don't have leakage as my cases weren't inverted (at least they don't show any signs of that). It's going to be a bottle by bottle situation. The Fred's and Adam's I've opened so far taste fine (dare I say excellent) but as I've said in previous posts I can vent the bottles by simply pushing up on the caps with my thumb. If left alone MAYBE they'll be fine, maybe they won't...I don't know. The Doggie is an entirely different affair. All the bottles are flat as a pancake (zero carbonation evident when poured) which Alan Sprints told me was "on purpose" and yet most recent ratebeer postings describe some head (albeit slight) to medium head. I haven't read any other reviews that describe it as without any carbonation or head. Is this a convenient excuse or are other people over describing the carbonation?
Having said all that the Doggie tastes pretty good (not as outstanding as I remember) but I doubt I'll risk cellaring more than a few as I doubt they will age. It's disappointing in light of the cost and expectation for aging. It'll just prompt me to check bottles with my thumb next time I buy any in a U.S. store. I doubt I'd reorder if another private order got organized.
I don't always piss in a bottle but when I do...I prefer to call it Dos Equis.
I look forward to trying the Adam, thanks to Lister. Unlike those of you that ordered personally I suffered no product loss so my sympathies.
Perhaps a simple question LCBO is in order: "what is the procedure for replacing faulty product?" Put the ball in their court; they're a hugely-funded Crown Corp put here to prectect you after all.
I will reorder but your point is a good one. I have done many sillier things in my life yet that only informs me there are many more sillier to come. Compared to those things, the upside of the excellence of this beer does balance the disappointment of the lack of cellaring potential. It is a reminder that my stash is not a crypt. I am also assured that this brewer is a rare and hard worker in his community so I think that tips it a bit for me. But I have not suffered a total loss, even as I have suffered loss.
It is good that the acquisition of an excellent thing conveys hard questions but I also wish it were not so.
Belgian wrote:
Perhaps a simple question LCBO is in order: "what is the procedure for replacing faulty product?" Put the ball in their court; they're a hugely-funded Crown Corp put here to prectect you after all.
The LCBO is actually quite good about taking back product, but I expect that the situation might be different for private orders. Sigh. I will have to go check out my bottles of DC.
Having said all that the Doggie tastes pretty good (not as outstanding as I remember) but I doubt I'll risk cellaring more than a few as I doubt they will age.
I picked up my HotD samples from Russ aka Grub at Volo (he happened to have some of his Biergotter Ressurection Porter on tap BTW, which I'm not ashamed to admit was one of the most delicious porters I've tried -- best beer trade ever).
Now, he re-crimped the caps on all the bottles, but he also indicated that Doggie Claws, being a big bottle-conditioned barleywine, will actually benefit from some aging as far as carbonation goes. He's not even going to crack his open until it's cellared a few months.
Unless the caps are really loose, you might want to consider leaving the Claws alone for a spell. If you can crimp those bad boys somehow, all might not be lost...
Good point. I popped a Claws last night and it was like a homebrew yet to sit long enough to finish - there was only a tiny pfft! and quite a haze. As the brews are so new that may be one aspect of what is going on. I am not going to recap but I think I may try different means of tightening the sealing like placing a board across the top of the open case and putting weights on top or maybe dipping the tops in sealing paraffin wax. That way the winter may do them some good and clarify them too.
