Arbitrator I knew that was you that liked to bring up bottle variation in the Eclipse beers. I couldn't remember and then you mentioned something about the eclipse party and I was confused.
Yeah, I first brought it up in 2009 and brought my tasting group around to the idea. They confirmed it in 2010 when they opened 2 bottles of Evan Williams side by side and found they tasted different. At that point we took it as a fact.
I don't bring it up to disparage the beers -- but I [used to] work in an engineering function assessing variability of semiconductor memory devices, and so I approached it like an engineering problem. I brought up the variation primarily as a suggestion for improving the packaging, since I knew they were using a mobile bottling operation. Todd didn't admit to any variation, but he indicated that in 2011 they were improving the packaging, so I bought a few cases again in support.
I still encountered variation, though it was less severe than the 2010 bottles. I wrote reviews accordingly. At that point, my relationship with Todd soured, primarily because he told my tasting group that I was off my rocker and/or trying to troll him. He adamantly denied bottle variation and attributed it to storage (never mind that sequential-numbered bottles from the SAME CASE in the SAME CLOSET opened on the SAME DAY tasted different).
At the same time, for 2012, he started brewing multiple batches of Totality and blending them, then blending barrels of different ages, so he knew something was going on and was working to alleviate the problem. He just didn't want to admit it and was kind of throwing me under the bus to do it. He confronted me in person at Eclipse and sent me some rude BMs -- we cleared it up later, but I was annoyed enough that I didn't buy the 2012 Eclipses at all, out of principle.
If it makes you feel better, I talked to Todd once and he admitted to the bottle variation. Obviously, he didn't say some bottles were crap, but basically they didn't, and possibly still don't, have tanks large enough to blend an entire batch at once. That lead to different blends for each bottle. To combat this, they just decided to put batch numbers on the bottles so you at least knew which batch you liked. Haven't bought a bottle to know if this is true, though, since they are stupid expensive here in Philly.
Yeah, he's danced around the idea of admitting crap bottles (which I understand -- financially, it's probably suicide), but the way he took my criticism so personally and argued with me over it has soured me on supporting him the way I used to. I still attend the party because it's a ton of fun, and I bought bottles thinking it would help me get tickets. But I understand I have no cache there anymore, and I've fallen a long way from "We need to get this guy in our blending sessions" to "**** this guy, he's a hater."
I tried to straddle the line between being a genuine, earnest supporter and offering constructive criticism where I could. Unfortunately, that line is either impossible to walk, or I don't have the finesse to do it.
That was the last post on this, I swear. Let's talk about BCBS.
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