St. Arnolds Brewery to dump 10,000 Gallon of their newest beer

Saint Arnold Announces Delay of Santo Release

HOUSTON, August 23, 2011 – Saint Arnold Brewing Company (www.saintarnold.com), the oldest craft brewery in Texas, today announced it will delay the release of its newest beer, Santo. The scheduled release date was September 1, 2011. Below is a statement from Brock Wagner, Saint Arnold Founder/Brewer:

We regret to announce that we are delaying the release of our newest beer, Santo. After brewing a 10 gallon test brew several months ago that we were enthusiastic about, we scaled up the recipe and recently brewed our standard 3,700 gallon batch. In fact, we have three such batches in the fermenters right now. After filtering a batch this week and getting it ready for packaging we tasted it. It was good, but it was missing that spark that separates a good beer from a great beer. So we are dumping the over 11,000 gallons of beer we have in the tanks.

We are brewing another batch tomorrow with a series of recipe tweaks. We will taste this in two to three weeks. If we are excited about the results, we will release it then (or more likely, about three weeks later so we can brew some additional batches). If we again do not believe it is a world class beer, we'll continue tweaking. We apologize for this issue. We would rather experience the embarrassment of delaying the release than release something that isn't the best beer we can brew.

The company has not set a new release date for Santo, but the earliest a full release could occur would be sometime in October 2011.

Editors: A high resolution image of Santo packaging is available for download at http://dpkpr.com/photos/9/1024x771/.

About Saint Arnold Brewing Company

Saint Arnold Brewing's ten brews are made and sold by the company’s staff of 35 dedicated employees. The brewery was listed by USA Today as one of the “10 great places to see what’s brewing in beer,” and Smart Meetings magazine named it among the “Top 5 breweries to host an event.” Saint Arnold is located at 2000 Lyons Avenue and its brewery tour and tasting is offered every weekday at 3:00 P.M. and Saturdays starting at 11 A.M. For more information on Saint Arnold's five year-round and five seasonal beers as well as root beer, log on to www.saintarnold.com.

Always refreshing to see a business emphasize quality over quantity.

It must be a tough situation to be in but kudos to them for their high professional standards (though I've never had their beer).

Probably their way of scooting around a contamination prob (!)

StMarcos said:

Probably their way of scooting around a contamination prob (!)

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the power of PR

I'm taking it at face value for what it is. They are well known for their quality beers around here, so it doesn't surprise me they are dumping a crappy batch. Reputation is pretty important in the competitive craft beer market, so I assume they are just eating some humble pie, and starting over to make the best beer possible for us!

But, but, but...don't ever dump your beer!

StMarcos said:

Probably their way of scooting around a contamination prob (!)

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Doubt it.

DFH dumped 120 min last year because it didn't ferment correctly.

I would rather see a brewery, donate it to the homeless, or funk it, spice it or barrel it just to see what happens.

I admire them for putting their name behind a quality product but that is still a lot of beer to waste.

rhoadsrage said:

I would rather see a brewery, donate it to the homeless,

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Ever wonder why many are homeless?:cross:

rhoadsrage said:

I would rather see a brewery, donate it to the homeless, or funk it, spice it or barrel it just to see what happens.

I admire them for putting their name behind a quality product but that is still a lot of beer to waste.

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Sort of what I was thinking. Seems like a huge waste. someone will drink it. Call it something else, give it a way to charity, send it to me.... something!

rhoadsrage said:

I would rather see a brewery, donate it to the homeless, or funk it, spice it or barrel it just to see what happens.

I admire them for putting their name behind a quality product but that is still a lot of beer to waste.

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As expensive as it was for them to make the batch, it would have been all the more expensive for them to store it long-term on the off chance that it would "fix itself", or to funk/spice/whatever it.

Storing beer costs money, and keeping a mediocre beer around at the expense of not storing a "proven" beer is a poor business decision.

I think donating their beer to the homeless would get them much more negative publicity than if they just sold it!

Slap a generic label and sell it for dirt cheap

distill that schit!

Just add about 70,000 gallons of water can call it a Coors clone

rhoadsrage said:

I would rather see a brewery, donate it to the homeless

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HAHA! I would love to see a Homeless Appreciation Day at the brewery. They could drive around in a school bus picking bums up and have a local soup kitchen serve food too!

Hell, I give beer that I make that's a little off to the homeless. Sometimes I have a sixer of mediocre homebrew in the passenger seat just to hook bums up.

beerandloathinginaustin said:

HAHA! I would love to see a Homeless Appreciation Day at the brewery. They could drive around in a school bus picking bums up and have a local soup kitchen serve food too!

Hell, I give beer that I make that's a little off to the homeless. Sometimes I have a sixer of mediocre homebrew in the passenger seat just to hook bums up.

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That's one of the funniest things I have read in a long time.

Damn, I was looking forward to trying 'Santo'. Owner Brock Wagner tweeted "There are good days. And then there are days we dump 11,000 barrels of beer."

Here's a link where Wagner talks about it a bit more

So...where do I line up with my growlers?

I hate to see this tbh. There are sober kids in India...

rhoadsrage said:

I would rather see a brewery, donate it to the homeless, or funk it, spice it or barrel it just to see what happens.

I admire them for putting their name behind a quality product but that is still a lot of beer to waste.

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I'm sure they just need to move on with their pipeline, that's a lot of beer to store.

I'm guessing their employees had a lot of beer to bring home!

Good for them for doing the right thing and not releasing a crap product.

beerandloathinginaustin said:

HAHA! I would love to see a Homeless Appreciation Day at the brewery. They could drive around in a school bus picking bums up and have a local soup kitchen serve food too!

Hell, I give beer that I make that's a little off to the homeless. Sometimes I have a sixer of mediocre homebrew in the passenger seat just to hook bums up.

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I think I just pissed myself. That's too funny.

beerandloathinginaustin said:

Hell, I give beer that I make that's a little off to the homeless. Sometimes I have a sixer of mediocre homebrew in the passenger seat just to hook bums up.

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Hehe, you are St.Arnold!

From a marketing perspective this is working out just fine. They successfully raised their brand awareness and linked it to quality brewing. Good on them for making lemonade out of lemons in the competitive craft brew market. Now I'd like to try their beer since it's got such high standards.

As a business decision it might be good but it is still wasteful. What if it was something food related say gourmet pasta sauce or something else like that. A company would take a lot of grief for throwing away food that doesn't "meet their high standards". It makes more sense to do something productive with it than putting it down the drain.

It's not like any of their other beers are "world class". They're not bad but none of them stand out on the world stage.

I'm going to their beer and cheese tasting event on the 31st, and in their news letter they said there might be a special beer paired with a special cheese there. I hope they didn't mean the one they just dumped. This dumping still stinks of a publicity stunt or a major problem such as an infection or just a bad recipe in general.

If it was me, unless it was really bad, I would package it, call it something else and donate the proceeds to charity. Seems like such a waste to dump it all.

Publicity stunt. They didn't actually brew 10K gallons and toss it.

If they did, someone should lose their job over it.

So what's everyone's feelings on DFH dumping their beer as was profiled on Brewmasters? Didn't really seem to be that much of an uproar for them.

PseudoChef said:

So what's everyone's feelings on DFH dumping their beer as was profiled on Brewmasters? Didn't really seem to be that much of an uproar for them.

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Never happened.

PseudoChef said:

So what's everyone's feelings on DFH dumping their beer as was profiled on Brewmasters? Didn't really seem to be that much of an uproar for them.

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Same deal. It's wasteful. I don't see how beer is any different than any other food product. Unless it's contaminated and tastes like crap they should dispose of it in a better way than just flushing it.

+ another 1 to them for dumping a mistake. st arnolds makes a damn good selection; they can't afford to mess up their reputation

Well it's ironic seeing as though st arnolds lawnmower is the only beer I ever dumped out

PseudoChef said:

So what's everyone's feelings on DFH dumping their beer as was profiled on Brewmasters? Didn't really seem to be that much of an uproar for them.

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Funky it up. Sour it. Distill it. But much of what DFH does seems silly to me anyway.

Damn, I was looking forward to trying 'Santo'. Owner Brock Wagner tweeted "There are good days. And then there are days we dump 11,000 barrels of beer."

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I think you mean gallons. That's a huge difference.

PseudoChef said:

So what's everyone's feelings on DFH dumping their beer as was profiled on Brewmasters? Didn't really seem to be that much of an uproar for them.

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I've got a feeling that things were different after the camera crew was gone. Gotta keep up the laid-back, chill image.

Phunhog said:

As a business decision it might be good but it is still wasteful. What if it was something food related say gourmet pasta sauce or something else like that. A company would take a lot of grief for throwing away food that doesn't "meet their high standards". It makes more sense to do something productive with it than putting it down the drain.

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What are they supposed to do with it? They can't release it to the public, it would hurt their identity of a craft brewer. Want them to give it to local farmer's as a 'probiotic' for their animals? Companies take no grief for wasted food because it only hurts their bottom line. The only reason we even heard about this is because it was a limited batch. When's the last time you heard about Anheiser dumping 11000 gal of product? It happens every day.

Really? people think this is a publicity stunt? Ridiculous. Brock said that he did a 10 gallon test batch and then scaled it up to 11K. The recipe has to be modified to try to match the test batch but sometimes when you do this you still dont get the end product that you want, and you dont find that out until the beer is finished. Maybe they didnt get the right hop, malt, or yeast character that they wanted. Even though this sounds wasteful to dump a batch over a minor issue it must be done in order to stick to the original plan and/or keep their reputation. It definitely hurts when a batch is dumped but every brewer knows that its always a possibility even though you do everything in your power to keep it from happening. No one will be fired and no one should be fired unless it was a careless mistake. Saint Arnold makes some incredible beer and Brock Wagner is a very respectable brewer. Show some respect

Out of curiosity, why wouldn't you ramp up your production one step at a time and start with 3700g, and if that turns out, do all three 3700g batches?

It does bring up a question I was always interested in - whether recipes scale linearly. Somehow I don't think so, and maybe this was the "gotcha" they ran into?