Railway City Ironspike Blond

tupalev · Post by **tupalev** » Mon Jul 20, 2009 8:52 am

Thanks for the feedback Len. I sounds like they are doing well and I caught them on a bad day. I am glad to hear they ditched the plastic bottles as well.

matt7215 · Post by **matt7215** » Fri Jul 24, 2009 11:29 am

i had a bottle of this last night and it tasted like cigarettes and malt extract.

this had all the signs of an extract brew but the extract tasted old and it had absorbed cigarette smoke from the environment where it was being stored.

ive liked all of the other railway city stuff ive had but this bottle was a huge dissapointment.

SteelbackGuy · Post by **SteelbackGuy** » Wed Jul 29, 2009 6:21 am

matt7215 wrote:i had a bottle of this last night and it tasted like cigarettes and malt extract.

this had all the signs of an extract brew but the extract tasted old and it had absorbed cigarette smoke from the environment where it was being stored.

ive liked all of the other railway city stuff ive had but this bottle was a huge dissapointment.

Weird. I had 4 bottles of the Amber this past weekend, and they all tasted like cigarettes. Bizzare. Anyway, I've contacted the brewery and hopefully they fix this soon.

Beer Geek · Post by **Beer Geek** » Wed Jul 29, 2009 11:18 am

tupalev wrote:I tried their "light" at the KW beer fest and I got a very weird flavour in the finish that could be interpreted as smokey. Whatever it was it was not pleasant and likely not intentional.

After having a good experience with this brewery initially with a fresh growler of their Blonde which was a serviceable gateway/session like light ale, I have not been impressed at all since. Infected homebrew like bottles on several occasions, and at the KW fest this weekend, rather boring Blonde/Amber/Light beer served by disinterested staff in the only booth without any banner at all outside of it and very limited signage in it. I do not mean to be so negative, but it just kills me to see a brewery waste a good opportunity to bring in new customers with half-assed beer and marketing efforts like I saw this past weekend. There was a reason why it was the only booth with 0 lineups at this busy fest.

Hopefully this weekend was a blip and they can turn this thing around - Len, they are in you area, are they doing well up there and more importantly, is the beer decent? Any plans to be a little more interesting?

They actually bought that tent the day of. They dropped off some beer early but had to run out and get a tent after realizing the event did not supply one. They showed up late to the event and ended up running out of beer on the Saturday and did not return on Sunday. In their defense, I did hear that this is typical for new breweries that are new to events like this. I also sampled their light and found it kind of smokey up front but then quickly lost any taste at all.

SteelbackGuy · Post by **SteelbackGuy** » Wed Jul 29, 2009 11:43 am

Beer Geek wrote:
tupalev wrote:I tried their "light" at the KW beer fest and I got a very weird flavour in the finish that could be interpreted as smokey. Whatever it was it was not pleasant and likely not intentional.

After having a good experience with this brewery initially with a fresh growler of their Blonde which was a serviceable gateway/session like light ale, I have not been impressed at all since. Infected homebrew like bottles on several occasions, and at the KW fest this weekend, rather boring Blonde/Amber/Light beer served by disinterested staff in the only booth without any banner at all outside of it and very limited signage in it. I do not mean to be so negative, but it just kills me to see a brewery waste a good opportunity to bring in new customers with half-assed beer and marketing efforts like I saw this past weekend. There was a reason why it was the only booth with 0 lineups at this busy fest.

Hopefully this weekend was a blip and they can turn this thing around - Len, they are in you area, are they doing well up there and more importantly, is the beer decent? Any plans to be a little more interesting?
They actually bought that tent the day of. They dropped off some beer early but had to run out and get a tent after realizing the event did not supply one. They showed up late to the event and ended up running out of beer on the Saturday and did not return on Sunday. In their defense, I did hear that this is typical for new breweries that are new to events like this. I also sampled their light and found it kind of smokey up front but then quickly lost any taste at all.

My understanding is that they had 2 other festivals this same weekend, and it was the first time for them using the system that they used at the K-W fest. They also had trouble in keeping up with demand for the festivals and the LCBO. I suspect they over-extended themselves a bit, but they realize that and are working to make sure that these things don't happen again.

As for the smoked flavour, well, they've now dumped those batches. Apparently, something happened with chlorine during the brewing process, and they've only recently been notified.

Gedge · Post by **Gedge** » Sat Aug 22, 2009 9:05 am

My dad brought a bottle of the blonde to share last night. Same experience as some others on the board - tasted distinctly of cigarette smoke. Went down the drain.

What would cause this kind of off-flavour?

Guybrush · Post by **Guybrush** » Sat Aug 22, 2009 10:53 am

What would cause this kind of off-flavour?

St. Thomas! ZING!!!

SteelbackGuy · Post by **SteelbackGuy** » Sat Aug 22, 2009 11:20 am

My last three bottles of the blonde all tasted of smoke too. Very odd.

Weissebier · Post by **Weissebier** » Sat Aug 22, 2009 9:30 pm

Here is some food for thought. As chlorine has been mentioned as being the culprit.

PHENOLIC

CHARACTERISTICS: A hospital-medicine chest flavor and aroma, best detected by its aroma components; caused by phenols. Some phenolic tastes are desired depending on the style. Other descriptions include Band-Aid-like, plasticlike, smoky, clovelike.

HIGH LEVELS DUE TO PROCESS: Yeast strain; chlorophenols in the water; improper rinse of chlorine sanitizers; oversparging; sparging above pH 6.0; sparging above 170 degrees; wild yeast contamination.

LOW LEVELS DUE TO PROCESS: Charcoal filtering of tap water; good healthy yeast strain; proper sparging while monitoring temperature and pH, good rinse of sanitizers or use of non-chlorine sanitizers.

EXAMPLES: Wheat beers have a high amount of the phenol 4-vinyl guaiacol that gives the characteristic clove taste.

W.

SteelbackGuy · Post by **SteelbackGuy** » Mon Aug 24, 2009 10:12 pm

Guybrush wrote:
What would cause this kind of off-flavour?
St. Thomas! ZING!!!

Too easy!!
But I've heard they have 25% more life!