Brewery Feedback?

[MrC]

Over the past couple of weeks I've had a couple of bad beers from a couple of NZs best craft brewers. On both occasions I decided to be proactive and flick the brewery an email letting them know of my experiences.
- The first brewery responded immediately and more than compensated me for the bad beer.
- The second brewery hasn't responded yet or has chosen not to respond.

I can't help but feel like a whinging beer geek even though I paid $6-8 for a drain pour.

So my questions to all you beer lovers out there are:
- Do you provide feedback to breweries when you get a bad beer (or a particularly great one for that matter)?
- Also, If you had a brewery, would you want to hear about every bad experience from crazy, over-excitable beer geeks & lovers?

[Alan Knight]

Ok, from a brewery operator's point of view, of course we want the feedback! And as others here have pointed out breweries don't set out to put rubbish beer on the market. But for most smaller operators the problems start once the beer leaves our control. Retailers may assure us that they will treat the beers properly but often they don't. Rather than store the bottles in cool conditions and rotate stock properly they leave it out in the warm or in direct sunlight and keep it there until it sells to a customer who ends up disapointed.
Sadly, not all beer shops are as good as Regional Wines & Spirits when it comes to selling beer properly.
And here's another thing to consider. Most breweries welcome all sorts of feedback and we love 'Crazy, Over-Excitable Beer Geeks'. They are the only reason we stay in business.

[aldee]

I had 3 or 4 bottles of one batch of my fav brewers pale ale that were just wrong,totally not as I'd found them before.
No response from my email questioning that batch.
Happened to be at an airshow where said brewer was serving their wares, made mention of my concern for that batch of beer and basically got fobbed off.
Still drank litres of their product over the weekend but I haven't forgotten their arrogance & lack of concern for their image.
Still buying same style from the local bottlo, can't help myself.

[denimglen]

Fuck it sucks when someone representing the brand fobs you off.

I was at the AK food show last year. There was a stall for Epic, and some noob was at the stand serving epic, I said I'd have a try of the lager cause it had just come out in the brown bottle, mentioned that the last one I had was a bit skunked, he just looked at me, rolled his eyes and said "Ha, Skunked, aye?", like I had no idea what I was talking about.

And the guy that was standing with him, wearing a Pliny the Elder shirt, so I said in a friendly manner 'That's a nice shirt mate', and he just fucking stared at me and made this grunt noise.

Choice, good work at representing your brand guys. Luckily for the Epic brand I know that Luke and his team seem like pretty good guys, so didn't think much of the 'tards at the stall.

[nzbrewer]

You sure that wasn't me after 4 long hard days of putting up with the public asking dumb ass questions? I can be rude at the best of times. Not that your question was dumb.

The Pliny guy was Steve Plowman.

Hey I'll make it up to you when I see you at Brew on Quay, I'll buy you an Epic Pale Ale.

Good staff are hard to find.

[denimglen]

Yeah probably was you, asshole :-P Nah wasn't you mate.

The Pliny guy was Steve? Fuck he was a real nice guy when I met him at Hallertau, maybe just a bad day eh?

Haha if good staff are hard to find, employ me for the next food show then fucker.

...actually don't, I'd probably end up worse than those guys and just drink all the beer haha.

[nzbrewer]

it might have been the 8 litres of Armageddon the two of us drank over the 4 days of the Food Show

[denimglen]

Probably, should have shared some of that with me then I wouldn't have had a whinge :-P

Man, now I feel stink buzz as for calling Steve out.

[nzbrewer]

I was only sharing with those in the know that came up and asked for Armageddon by name. If you where in the know you would have asked, and received.

Next time.

[Hugh Grierson]

As a beer geek and a brewery rep I say yes to both. I got a dodgy Renaissance a few months ago, emailed this through, and got no reply.
If a brewey has a problem they need to know, and to fix it.
Lots of things can go wrong between the brewery and the glass.

[aldee]

Wouldn't happen to be a batch 42, APA by any chance?

[Soren]

I work for Renaissance and I'm sorry to hear you guys had bad experiences.
Hugh, I don't think we got your email, do you remember when you send it and we'll have another look. I am particular interested in where you got it, I know how terrible some stores stock craft beers.
Aldee, again, I don't think we received your email, do you remember when you send it? Batch 42 was brewed long before my time, must be almost 2 years ago now which would explain them being off. Did you get these recently?
Even more sorry that we put you off at the airshow. It's not an excuse but many people at these events openly tells us how they hate the beer because it doesnt taste like their standard tui (while still pounding it by the litre), we could have mistanken you for "one of those people" and ignored you. Or maybe we were just really busy at the time. What ever the explanation, I apologize.

[aldee]

Hey no worries, it wasn't a name and shame exercise for me, just a general comment.
Buy most of my Renaissance beers from Henry's in Rangiora,would be within the last 4 mths, but I think I had a brain fade,shoulda been batch 48,they had 62 on the shelf at the same time so I figured it was old stock but as I regularly clean them out I doubt it was their old stock. Either way the lack of action by the manager and/or your rep. would have done the company an injustice because if you hadn't drunk a good one you'd never buy another if your first experience was one of the baddies.
Keep up the good work, I'm a big fan of your product although I'm yet to warm to the stonecutter,must keep trying !