Love Good Beer

Hi Chris:
I am very sorry about your experience and I would love the opportunity to make it up to you. We are serious about brewing top quality beer and want to always improve on what we do. This is why we take your comments to heart and want to create better experience for you. Please, contact me directly at angie@russellbeer.com to chat about how we can make this right for you. Sincerely, Angie Harris

Thanks Angie, great to hear from you guys. I’d love to be a Russel fan again and will for sure contact you.

So you returned beer, not purchased from a BC liquor store to a BC Liquor store? Did they know you didn’t buy it from them?

Yes I did. They just assumed I bought it from them. I suppose that’s one consumer benefit of a liquor sales monopoly.

It sounds like you defrauded a branch of the provincial government and then incriminated yourself by posting it on the Internet.

I suppose I unknowingly did so, guess I will have to accept the consequences. You think I’ll get jail time even though I’d be a first time offender?

[...] month or so back I wrote about a bad experience I had with Russell Brewing.  Russell found the post a short time later and contacted me.  Angie [...]

Check out the follow up post: http://lovegoodbeer.com/2009/01/a-tour-of-russell-brewing/

Russell more than made it up to me. Cheers to Russell.

Interesting – I had cans of several Russell beers a couple of months ago at a tasting with some friends, and they were all in various states of sourness, from on-the-verge to full-on unintentional lambic.

The claim that it can be chalked up to improper storage of their unpasteurized beer is a bit disingenuous, given that there are thousands of unpasteurized beers on the market in cans and bottles that undoubtedly go through a good deal of temperature fluctuation between leaving the brewery and being consumed by the customer, and few of them go bad.

Honestly, the sourness we experienced struck us as being the result of an infection during the brewing or canning process, especially since we had three or four beers from them with the same problem.

Oops – I guess I should’ve more carefully read the later post in this series before posting my comment above. I see now that they’ve admitted to having some issues with the canning line a few months back. Good to know that they’ve (hopefully) found the problem, as the couple of beers we tried that we’re quite so sour actually showed promise of being pretty decent.

Hey Greg, I wanted to give Russell the benefit of the doubt considering that the beer came from an ultimate tournament where temperatures were 30 degrees or more. I did try other beers from that tournament that were good, but they could have been from a different batch. Infection was definitely a possibility, sadly Erik has had the same problem with Spinnakers, detailed in his last post.

It does sound like Russell has addressed all or most of their production problems, at least all of the beer we tried at the brewery was unspoiled. They are definitely very passionate people who are proud of their beer and I really appreciated their efforts to get me back on board the Russell train. If you let them know of your experience, maybe they will extend you the same opportunity to visit their brewery?

Cheers,

Chris

Chris – given that I live about 2500 miles from Surrey, an offer to visit the brewery probably wouldn’t really do me much good.

I’ll make a point of trying their beer again in the future, though, should the opportunity arise.

I figured as much, but you’d at least have something to do if you came out here:) Does Russell have distribution in Ontario?

No, Russell isn’t available out here. I got my cans through other means.

[...] Blonde Ales, as well as their Extra Special Lager.  My friends, many of whom were affected by the original incident, got to taste what Russell’s beer should taste like.  We were also treated to several of my [...]

As Russell is still unavailable in Calgary, I had six flats “imported” from the lower mainland in the spring of last year.
I am just running through the last six pack of Pale Ale & it still tastes as good as the day it was born.

I am glad you had a better experience than we did Hugh. I am not sure if you’ve read the follow up post, but Russell has more than made amends for the bad batch.

Cheers,

Chris

[...] a Canadian IPA, eh? We have a significant history with Russell (which you can read about here, here, and here); one of the criticisms we had of them was that their beer was rather [...]

If Russell Beer is so passionate about selling and brewing a great product, why has someone been dumping stock from $.75 down to .03???
The company and stock is a horrible joke. And I would say a Harris is burning stock or using it as toilet paper.

Can’t say I know anything about all that. I did like their Black Death Porter though.