oxidised beers

[dcalnan]

Recently I bought some mcgargles up and the first two were nice, but the second two were after getting oxidised. I sent off an email to mcgargles and they apologised and sent me a free slab you say sorry, Alan was really nice to deal with. But now I've just opened up a oharas double up and it tastea like it's been oxidised. Is this something I should always be cautious of when buying craft beer. What do you do when something similar happens you, do you get onto the brewer like I did or just throw it away?

[alealex]

Email O'Haras and finger crossed you'll get another slab of free beer 
What do I do when that happens to me.. ? hmm? down the drain and don't buy it any more.

[cruiscinlan]

Email O'Haras and finger crossed you'll get another slab of free beer 
What do I do when that happens to me.. ? hmm? down the drain and don't buy it any more.

That happened me before with an O'Haras as well, but it was full on infected (smelt like fish!), all the more surprising as it was an imperial stout, and a special brew for their tenth anniversary.

[delzep]

Email O'Haras and finger crossed you'll get another slab of free beer 
What do I do when that happens to me.. ? hmm? down the drain and don't buy it any more.

That happened me before with an O'Haras as well, but it was full on infected (smelt like fish!), all the more surprising as it was an imperial stout, and a special brew for their tenth anniversary.

I had about 10 bottles of that stuff and it was superb

[Qs]

Email O'Haras and finger crossed you'll get another slab of free beer 
What do I do when that happens to me.. ? hmm? down the drain and don't buy it any more.

That happened me before with an O'Haras as well, but it was full on infected (smelt like fish!), all the more surprising as it was an imperial stout, and a special brew for their tenth anniversary.

Was that in the big swing top bottle? Cos I'll never buy one of them off O'Haras again after getting one where the top wasn't properly sealed and the beer was pretty oxidised. With the prices of those beers I was really pissed off.

[alealex]

Getting infected pint of Oharas in Rds last year was worse than getting oxidised of special in d shop.

[Shanna]

Email O'Haras and finger crossed you'll get another slab of free beer 
What do I do when that happens to me.. ? hmm? down the drain and don't buy it any more.

That happened me before with an O'Haras as well, but it was full on infected (smelt like fish!), all the more surprising as it was an imperial stout, and a special brew for their tenth anniversary.

Was that in the big swing top bottle? Cos I'll never buy one of them off O'Haras again after getting one where the top wasn't properly sealed and the beer was pretty oxidised. With the prices of those beers I was really pissed off.

I got five empty bottles from one of their barrel aged beers (barley wine I think). I found the swing tops on them don't achieve a very good seal so I replaced them with swing tops from chipped or broken bottles. It's a pity as they are class bottles other than that.

Shanna

[Qs]

I've used the bottle myself and its been fine. They just had the red rubber lad arseways on it.

[UpsidedownA (Andrew)]

Speaking as someone with experience of this from both sides, it's very helpful, if you do have an issue with a beer, to include as much identifying information as possible about the beer (e.g. best before date, batch number if it's visible, where you had it, whether it was draught or bottled etc). Without that information, there's pretty much nothing a brewery can do about it. There will very likely be thousands of bottles in circulation belonging to different batches, that will have been made with malt/hops etc from different lot numbers, fermented separately etc. The brewery might have been playing around with things like filter size and disposition or indeed being doing any number of things that could have had an impact on the beer you got. The first step to getting quality issues sorted is always find out what the problem is. If it is oxidation, there's a reasonable chance it was a capping issue, potentially affecting individual bottles, rather than whole batches (obviously better from the brewery's perspective).
Bottom line: it's good to know if you come across quality issues, but not if you can't supply enough information for the brewery to do anything about it.

[mr hoppy]

I'd have thought the onus would have been on a commercial enterprise to manage its own quality control, rather than the consumer.

[pob]

I'd have thought the onus would have been on a commercial enterprise to manage its own quality control, rather than the consumer.

And a good commercial enterprise will take consumer feedback, investigate it & correct it or put a plan in place to implement a change.

They value this feedback as they understand it strengthens their business.

The poor breweries are the ones that ignore valid consumer feedback or use the 'that's the way it's supposed to be' attitude.

You don't really have to worry about those ones, they generally don't last.

[mr hoppy]

At the end of the day consumers by and large will take the attitude that it's not their problem, if a producer can't get it right without their input they'll buy from someone who will. It's fine to take feedback on board but I'd have thought a good business would have it's own internal quality/feedback mechanisms rather than relying on consumer feedback alone.

[UpsidedownA (Andrew)]

I'd have thought the onus would have been on a commercial enterprise to manage its own quality control, rather than the consumer.

Of course it is. And the consumer doesn't have to leave any feedback. But if the customer does leave feedback, it's not especially helpful if the brewer can't identify which beer was the problem. Presumably you want to help the brewery when you leave feedback, right? Why else would you bother.

[dcalnan]

Just remembered I bought both from the Tesco in Douglas, I'll have to avoid there for beer in future. They mustn't be taking care of them properly.

[JayMc]

Had a delivery come into the shop a few months back. In one of the slabs of Headless Dog one bottle didn't have a cap. There was no sign of one anywhere so I could only assume it was shipped this way. The most surprising thing was though, that not one drop had spilled. I was working so I had to pour it down the drain. Smelled amazing and broke my heart a little to waste it