Wait hang on, did I say “noteworthy beer author?” Let me rephrase that with “myopic blogger with a shittier page rank than DDB.”

CHECK OUT THIS HOT EDITORIAL FRESH OUT OF THE POT:

HE’S GOT OPINIONS ABOUT HOW THE BRUERY HANDLED THE RECENT INFECTION AND A SMALL GROUP OF PEOPLE ARE ABOUT TO HEAR ABOUT THEM

Let’s couch bashing this old timey Pepperidge Farms website for a moment and address the substance of what Mr. Alan McLeod is saying:

1) new breweries are having problems with quality control
2) The Bruery took an active stand against quality control (by offering consumers the option to purchase something with full disclosure)
3) The Bruery should have outright dumped all of the beer and not allowed customers to exercise any choice as to whether they wished to purchase the product, fully-informed or otherwise
4) He also makes this final point:
“If it is good enough for big beer and the jet setting purveyors of sucker juice to suggest that if “a beer drinker has a bad experience, they are just going to go back to companies they know and trust” it is also worth the same pile on when an established brewer is passing off unstable and unintendedly sub-par beer – even at an embarrassingly inflated discount”

You may also notice that this sentence has 66 words in it, an out-of-context quote, no fewer than three independent clauses, the word “unintendedly,” and, most importantly: doesn’t make any fucking sense.

So let me try to dig in and break down the dollop of levity that I whipped up in the ole DDB kitchen yesterday, since this author wants to grind on a straw man.
I am in favor of full disclosure from breweries: when they fuck up, when they have relevant information, even when it wouldn’t matter to 90% of the craft beer world. Giving a consumer a transparent appraisal of your product and then leaving the decision up to them is not “sucker juice,” it is leaving autonomy to the neckbeards to decide whether they want a $20 bottle of lacto porter or 3 issues of Barely Legal. I like that they have that choice. I do not like that the beers were infected and I didn’t dust off my “FUCK QC” foam finger for this issue, if people want to buy the beers, then let them.

Making a blanket statement about new breweries in general is myopic and leverages Goliath to fall onto David. The Bruery is not a new operation, nor are they undercapitalized, nor are they some novice in the beer game. They have produced some world class beers and maintain one of the largest independent barrel aging programs in the United States. To give them a condescending pat on the head, call them “charmingly high billing” and “put on [their] big boy pants” warrants qualification. Not from them, from you Alan McLeod. I am not here to apologize for Bruery infecting a beer, I am here to take a look at your qualification for making any judgments about their products.

On his own admissions he “[is] not out of pocket because [he has] not been impressed with any offerings [he has] tried by the brewery in question, chalking down the muddle to trucking beer across a continent.” What in the fuck is this guy even talking about? A massive barrel aged beer like Bourbon Barrel Bois was somehow skunked in transit? We are given no context for the opinions presented beyond a quick wash, “I have, thankfully, no skin in the game.” More apt, this guy has no fucking knowledge in the game of Bruery offerings. If you haven’t tried the best offerings from a brewery, maybe you should either 1) shut the fuck up with blanket statements about all of their products or 2) qualify your shitty opinion with “I have had only Mischief and Rugbroad, I don’t seem to know shit.”

It’s fine not to know what the fuck you are talking about, but characterizing the DDB post as some kind of apology again, makes no fucking sense. If you want to talk about consumer responsibility, the choice is very binary: buy it or fuck off. It is as simple as that. I read the Bruery email and was like “wait, should I buy this?” and then the second question arose, “perhaps I should just fuck off.” This guy is not even in the Reserve Society, has no fucking ability to even buy the beers he is railing against, no knowledge of the products in question, and instead we get some autoerotic quotes like, “I avoid this sort of problem by educating myself well in advance, by knowing how the world works.” Oh shit, throw me a rope down from your Ivory Tower because the rest of us have no idea what we are doing. We simply cannot make informed decisions like you can, Alan McLeod. We need to enlist the help of The AUTHOR OF “THE UNBEARABLE NONSENSE OF CRAFT BEER – A RANT IN NINE ACTS” I am not shitting you.

Bottom line: standards do matter. The Bruery offered up a product with a full disclosure of their own knowledge and allowed consumers to make their own decisions. No one is applauding the infection. I have yet to find a single person who read the email and was like “this is fucking tight, $10 off.” We all understand the circumstances and the transaction presented because we are fucking adults. We don’t need some interloping third party to explain to us that a brewery should dump infected beer. I can understand that without a rant in nine acts because I am a fucking adult.

The ultimate irony is being called a “sign of the end times” by a noteworthy blogger from the past, who remains less relevant in today’s continually-evolving beer culture.