How to tell a craft brewer his beer is seriously flawed

General Homebrew Discussion
21

I have just recently had the same experience, and was thinking it was just me being overly critical or came at a bad moment in time.  I wonder if it is the same place.

[/quote]
  +1.  There is a fairly new brewpub around here that has really good guest taps (ie.,Stone, Founders, 3Floyds,etc.), but also serves their own beers.  They make beer that is incredibly flawed - I’m not a BJCP and it’s easy to find fermentation temp issues, infection issues, mash temp/recipe formulation errors, all on top of beers that are bland, underhopped, some undrinkable.  A perfect storm of s#*t. The guy says his parents “helped” him start the place. A few more (or hundreds of) homebrew batches might have helped.

22

I second this. In my opinion there are a lot of breweries opening around Denver, CO that just aren’t that good. Instead of focusing on making solid beer, it seems that a lot are focusing on making hybrid/unique beers. I am amazed to see some of these places packed for average at best beer a lot of the time…

23

True.  But “underhopped” or similar comments show a bias toward highly hopped beers - which is a flaw as to some styles.  I agree however; if a BJCP qualified judge is saying that the beers are cr$p, then the brewer needs to know.  Sink or swim is one thing, but a little constructive criticism would delay the “sink”… Which is fair.  The whole concept of hybrid beers intrigues me, but I always say I judge a brewery by how well they brew to style on those styles I prefer.  I’m no hophead, so I don’t care how well they make a DIPA.  How well do they make a cream ale, a Belgian Saison, a pilsner, an oatmeal stout, a porter, and a Belgian Dubbel?  That tells me more about them than their “creativity”.

24

This is what I ended up sending:

Henry-

We met a few weeks back when you came to the meeting at Cross Street Irregulars homebrew club.  I really enjoyed meeting you and your son and wanted to tell you I am really impressed with your brewery’s story.  Further, I think you guys have a great brand and from what is sounds like, a really special brewery and farm.

At the risk of giving an unsolicited opinion, I wanted to give some feedback on the beer itself, and didn’t think the brew club meeting was the best venue.  I didn’t take specific notes, but was picking up some pretty significant off-flavors, most of which seemed to be from either yeast pitch rate, yeast health, or fermentation temperature.

Not having the beer to taste, I cannot specifically recall what compounds are present, nor what processes in the brewhouse might have caused them, but I seem to recall diacetyl and potentially some acetaldehyde.  However, you might want to consider putting a small tasting panel together and doing a blind triangle tasting (one sample with your beer, the other two with another commercially-made example of the same beer style, such as Sierra Nevada Pale Ale next to your Tavern Pale Ale, assuming the latter is an American-style Pale Ale).  After the tasting notes are complete and compared, you may be able to trace it back to a process.

You could probably solicit some local homebrew clubs to see if they have any judges available who would be willing to assist.  I do have my BJCP certification, but am awaiting my final score on my written exam to see if I achieved a score high enough for ‘National’ level.  Further, I am moving out of the area in about 6 weeks for work, so will likely be quite busy!

In any event, I debated whether to send this email and give you guys feedback, but thought I would offer my opinion.  Worst-case, you can completely ignore me and hopefully be no worse off.  Maybe you are already doing quality control or are aware of the problem.  Maybe you just don’t want any feedback, which, again, is understandable.

Best of luck to you all-
Mike

25

Very diplomatic! Awesome!

I look forward to their response(s) or lack thereof. ;D

26

aaaand the response.

I won’t be visiting their brewery and frolf course.  The flavors they have are not from water or fresh hops.  What those customers are in love with is the experience of being at a farm brewery.  I tried.

Mike ,
Thank You for your input. Our ales do have a distinct flavor since we use unconditioned well water and our own hops.
There are times when our crew taste the different ales and feel that there might be a problem with some of our brew and then a few customers come in and fall in love with it.
Thank you again for the input.

27

Wow…just wow.

At least you tried.

28

I agree as well.

If you really want to help them I would let them know on the down low.

Nice effort though.

29

I’m not really surprised that they are ignoring you.  They ask for feedback, but they don’t really want it.

Although for the record, a triangle tasting would be totally inappropriate for picking out flaws if you are using someone else’s beer.  You could do a triangle with SNPA and FWP31 and pick out the one that is different every single time, but that doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with either beer.

30

It doesn’t sound like he knows what he’s talking about and has little brewing experience, knowledge and/or a dead palate. What does unconditioned well water have to do with diacetyl or acetaldehyde? Plus those customers that fall in love the “off flavors” with may just be converting from BMC, which would make their opinion pretty much useless. Or maybe they’re just being nice and will never return because the beer sucks.

31

They will sink eventually.  Everyone has tried a beer for its label, advertising or just on a whim, but flawed beer will not bring anyone back.  And if it does, well, the brewery is damn lucky.  You wrote a nice tactful letter that gave them a suggestion - a lifeline - but they weren’t looking to take it.  Pretty sad.

32

Why get into the business if you don’t care about your beer quality? Pisses me off.

33

I thought of that, but wouldn’t the taster have a predisposition to look for flaws in the beer?  My thought was you have 1 flAwed beer (theirs) and one flawless beer (snpa), and it would be a bit more ‘blind’.  How would you construct the tasting?

34

As the number of breweries explodes, there is more and more of this.

35

What they really need is sensory analysis training to learn what the flaws taste like. It’s true that many people will like some flaws - the raisiny/sherry flavor of oxidation, nice buttery diacetyl, appley acetylaldehyde - these are not all bad flavors, they just don’t belong in beer. Most people don’t recognize that.

Being self-critical is a rare and useful skill. I’m not too shocked at their response, but they were lucky to have someone bring it too them. Most future reviews will be on BeerAdvocate, Yelp, etc. Unfortunately, they can probably survive on uninformed customers - but they won’t thrive.

36

Oh God no! I hope you are joking! TTB already has way too much power as is! As long as the said brewery in question is not making anyone sick they should have the right to live or die on the virtues of their product.

37

Exactly - the best way is through a doctored beer, take some SNPA and add acetaldehyde to it so they can pick out the off flavor.  Then explain that it is an OFF FLAVOR. :slight_smile:

38

“We thought about building something with better fuel economy, but customers keep buying the cars anyway.” - GM ca. 1975

39

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
    H. L. Mencken

40

Agree absolutely.  The LAST thing you want are the government clowns (I don’t care what party’s in power) in charge.  The government is a metaphor for FUBAR.  We’d just have more expensive beer due to more regulations.  It’s in that brewery’s best interest (profit) to make good beer.  That and competition from good breweries will force them to make good beer–or else.