DD2000GT
Well-Known Member
So today I decided to brew my American IPA kit I got from Williams Brewing Supply. I have never ordered supplies off the internet, rather preferring to give my business to my LHBS - but I have been trying to track down a metalic "house" flavor - so I decided to get the ingredients from another supplier to eliminate possible stale LME and hops.
Everything looked good about the company - nice catalog, decent prices, good selections - and the shipping was first class (they shipped the ingredients with a reusable frozen pack to keep it as cool as possible as long as possible) - I was pretty impressed. Opened the ingredients, the malt looked good, the hops smelled very fresh, and the liquid yeast puffed up in less than a day - good there. So - like almost every other homebrewer on the planet, I like to keep a log of brews (ingredients, amounts, gravities, etc.) and I could not find a list of ingedients on the Williams packaging - so I called up there customer service to see what was in the kit for my log. Here is where it got "funny".
They would not tell me what they used - not the malt, not the hops, not the variety, not the alpha acids - not even the amounts (besides 8 lbs. of malt that was listed). Oh come on people - it isn't like you have a corner on the market for beermaking ingredients (hops, malt, yeast...), and I already bought it anyway. I explained, since it was a food product, I should be able to see what goes in it - nope! It is like they have a cure for cancer or something!
Well - maybe they are all like this, but I find it odd a company that caters to homebrewers, do not want to seem to help homebrewers... Any online companies that don't feel their ingredients are a matter of national security I can switch to?
Everything looked good about the company - nice catalog, decent prices, good selections - and the shipping was first class (they shipped the ingredients with a reusable frozen pack to keep it as cool as possible as long as possible) - I was pretty impressed. Opened the ingredients, the malt looked good, the hops smelled very fresh, and the liquid yeast puffed up in less than a day - good there. So - like almost every other homebrewer on the planet, I like to keep a log of brews (ingredients, amounts, gravities, etc.) and I could not find a list of ingedients on the Williams packaging - so I called up there customer service to see what was in the kit for my log. Here is where it got "funny".
They would not tell me what they used - not the malt, not the hops, not the variety, not the alpha acids - not even the amounts (besides 8 lbs. of malt that was listed). Oh come on people - it isn't like you have a corner on the market for beermaking ingredients (hops, malt, yeast...), and I already bought it anyway. I explained, since it was a food product, I should be able to see what goes in it - nope! It is like they have a cure for cancer or something!
Well - maybe they are all like this, but I find it odd a company that caters to homebrewers, do not want to seem to help homebrewers... Any online companies that don't feel their ingredients are a matter of national security I can switch to?