False Alarm!
Today everything is different. After going around to every retail account, I can’t find this beer June 11th beer anywhere. What I did find was some March beer at one of the stores that we got a complaint from. It was probably the culprit, we’ve had problems with March beer before, but I though it was all long gone by now. All the beer we brought back at the brewery is ok, and after re-checking my shelf life samples, they are ok too!
I feel stupid! I think my tastes buds were off yesterday, and I was suspicious of that bad filtration and putting out slightly cloudy beer in the first place. However, Chris and I have now come to the conclusion that I was wrong, and it was old beer on the shelf that was the culprit!
And oh, there was some old beer on the shelf’s in Iowa City! Hivee First Avenue, where our beer is on the warm shelf in the middle store, had January beer. That is six months old! Please help me convince these people that we deserve a cold slot, or maybe a top slot on the warm shelf.
The Coralville Liquor store is one of my least favorite places in Iowa City. Do yourself a favor, go to the Coralville Hivee, or even better, John’s Grocery. They really give microbrews a stiff arm here, and they have the gall to carry a plethora of them. They are nearly all on the warmshelf, to make room for double stacked bud in the cooler. They had done some rearranging since the last time I was there, and it seems that now they use a duster to keep the dust off the micro’s. But they haven’t added a walk in cooler, which is really what they need. We are topshelf on the warmshelf, which is too bad. In this store, the warm shelf really is warm! My beer was nearly body temperature. I don’t why they can’t keep the store air conditioned (and it was cool day), but since the store owner is completely disinterested in talking to me, there is not much I can do about it. They also were carrying our sampler packs, which I have asked my distributor not to sell to them. Sure enough, the beer in the sampler packs was a full three months older than anything else on the shelf (which was mostly from May).
The other store that make me hot is the Waterfront Drive Hivee (on highway 6). First they have this bastard setup for a liqour store that is connected to the main Hi-vee, but still seperate. They know people are lazy, and now they put some beers over by the meat section. Mostly just bud, but I imagine that most people nab that and never wander over to the liqour store portion. Their setup for the cold room makes no sense and it totally biased to imports. We are on the warm shelf which is the the farthest corner of the store, in a corner. Very hard to see. Our product moves so slowly that our distributor never even puts any backstock in the store. I’m always tempted to ask them to remove our beers completely. What is the point? They’ll put four Glazer beers in the cold shelf FACING, but we can’t get a single six pack in sideways.. well of course it doesn’t sell!
Overall I was glad to see that most the beer was pretty fresh, very little was older than May. I was disturbed to see some Schokolade Bock on the shelfs.. from February. But it is still clear and probably drinkable, though I doubt it tastes much like it did four months ago.
One thing I did not see was our John’s Belgian White anywhere. I guess all the Hivee’s and other stores are not going to carry a competitor’s product. Too Bad. If you want our award winning John’s Grocery Generations White Ale, you will have to go to John’s, who is now the defacto exclusive outlet for this wonderful beer. I guess its their loss and John’s Groceries gain! I’m not really upset, since we are selling dozen’s of cases of it a week there. It selling really well in other cities, where they are not so afraid of the name.
So you can disregard the last post about June 11th beer. You won’t find any of it anyway since we destroyed 40 cases of it already at the brewery. We are very concerned about quality, especially now when we are enjoying such good growth in repeat customers. Better safe than sorry.