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Lakefront's exploding beers

Posted: Sun Aug 18, 2019 1:02 pm
by Beer-lord

Re: Lakefront's exploding beers

Posted: Sun Aug 18, 2019 1:15 pm
by swenocha
Good on them for recalling. This is happening a lot with adding unfermented juice and/or puree at canning/bottling/kegging time. Combination of sugars and any wild yeast (or residual yeast from the initial ferm), and this is what you get. I will note I've seen non-fruit beers explode (personally saw and heard some Blue Pants explosions at a Sam's Club)... but usually it's the added fruit bombs... I know Southern Grist has dealt with this on cans and crowlers in the past, as have many others (Urban Artifact, Veil, Answer, 450 South, Evil Twin, etc). They ask people to keep them refrigerated. I personally think that canning an essentially unfinished beer and saying it's on you to properly handle it or IT WILL EXPLODE might not be the best idea. Of course, if you can convince the public that these are perishable, then maybe not as big of an issue, but the prior precedent of beer NOT being perishable in this sense works against that. Add to that shipping conditions, how the stores shelve them, etc. FWIW, the sno-cone beers that SG did, while quite tasty, were not beer to me. Were more of an alcoholic fruit juice/puree. But that's just MHO...


A not-very-good (IMHO) article on the topic: https://www.craftbeerjoe.com/craft-beer ... dNdGZMQSSE (my beef with the article is the argument that this "doesn’t mean that the brewery ... should take the steps to make the beer more stable")

A better article: https://www.goodbeerhunting.com/sightli ... Dg_uMviA1I
Boulevard Brewing’s Jeremy Danner raised the issue on Twitter.

“I can’t believe it’s even a conversation,” he tweeted on July 18. “If a brewery knowingly packages beer that has the potential to explode, they clearly don’t give a damn about the consumer and I’m angry they exist.”

The next day, as some replied that the onus should be on consumers, he tweeted further: “If breweries aren’t equipped or willing to package beer that won’t explode, THEY SHOULDN’T PACKAGE IT. How on earth is this even a conversation?!”
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