Off flavours in major commercial beer

[Cart]

Okay, so before I start I know many of you will jump all over a few aspects of this, but bear with me. My wife is recently back to beer drinking after a few pregnancies and a period of nursing, so I picked up a 6 of Alexander Keith's India Pale Ale. Here is the first spot where people will have an issue... I know it's not an IPA, and is in effect the same as most every North American Pale Lager... but moving on. Following the logic and experience of Charles Bamforth (check out his book Beer is Proof God Loves Us), even though it's not craft beer, major national breweries, in this case Labatt, care deeply about product consistency, and produce near perfect examples of their style of beer. Whatever beer snobs like you and me think about the style, and some people, SWMBO included, quite like it, and usually it is perfectly consistent.

This brings me to the issue at hand. Sitting at the supper table, my wife says, "My tastes must have changed, I'm not enjoying this." After a few questions, she said the issue was a "tang", which I initially attributed to the fact that she was drinking from a can (I know....), so I poured a portion into a clean glass for her to taste. A tiny bit better, but still no good, so I tasted it (from the glass). The beer had a very pronounced DMS flavour and slight, but definitely noticable acidity, neither typical of Keith's.

I've had mass produced beer that is skunked or stale, showing poor handling and storage, but newly bought, popular, canned beer should be reasonably fresh. This is the first time that I've encountered flaws that likely result from the brewing process or sanitation in mass produced beer. Has anyone else had similar experiences? Other than the obvious, drink homebrew instead, what should a guy do?

 

[weirdboy]

There is no telling how long that can sat out in the sun on the back of a truck, or in the unconditioned storage room of the store where you bought it, or any other number of places in the distribution chain where it could develop off flavors.

I wouldn't necessarily condemn the brewery for a single bad can, although it would certainly make me hesitate to buy that beer from that store again. Especially since I would have to imagine that Labatt's does some kind of quality control on every single batch they send out the door.

 

[jonmohno]

I agree, ive had a crappy stale SNA,pale ale not too long ago.And what is up with brightly lit beer showcases,isnt this bad for beer? Ive had enough craft to know by tasting them how they have been stored, so i dont rule them out as a bad beer,just poor handiling or storage maybe.

 

[sudsmcgee]

I had a horrible sulfur-laden beer from Lakefront Brewery in WI and I e-mailed them to let them know about it so they could fix the problem. They never even acknowledged the receipt of my e-mail. This is the last time I bought their beer (although I've admittedly drank other people's Lakefront beers).

I know their not a macro producer, but don't blow off the fact your beer tasted like ass. /end rant

 

[Hammy71]

When I've had issues with a commercial beer in the past I've emailed the company. Most have been very grateful for the feedback since they need to know what the customer is actually getting. I've shipped bottles back to companies before (at their request). All the breweries have compensated me somehow for the bad brew.

 

[Revvy]

Once a beer leaves the brewery there's really no telling how a beer is treated and handled down the line til you get it. Additionally, as watching Brewmaster's on discovery showed, even big breweries have bad batches and dumpers, though hopefully their quality control would catch it.

So it's not surprising to find bad commercial beers on occasion. Especially now that your palletes have changed from brewing where you tend to be more attuned to looking for off flavors. I've found diacetyl in quite a few beers over the years.

Me personally I don't "do" anything. Other's might contact the brewery, but unless it's an infected batch or there's a foreign object in the bottle, then how do we know it's not the fault of the distributor, or the beer store itself?

To me it's not worth busting a gut over....