Anyone familiar with the ABC (in california) know if there is anything that prohibits Small manufacturers (so no retail license even though they sell beer direct) from providing cash returns for spoiled beer?
I know retailers are allowed to do it, but this brewery is saying their attorney stated it’s illegal. I haven’t read a single thing that prohibits the return of spoiled beer for cash in the ABC, but I wonder if someone else might know.
Is it a truly bad bottle or is it ‘spoiled’ because you bought it in perishable (growler) form and didn’t drink it in time? Legal or not, if the latter I’d tell you to go pound sand as well, counselor.
Infected beer. Soured barrel aged stout because they don’t have a clean facility to separate their barrel aged stouts and barrel aged sours. The term the ABC uses is “spoiled”
Are they willing to offer some sourt of “refund” “in kind”?
they offered a gift card. Gift card can only be used at the brewery. Issue is all special releases are done on brownpapertickets and you can’t use the gift cards. Everything at the brewery is supermarket shelf stuff.
In a ‘bad batch’ situation, absolutely they owe you a refund. The refund situation is weird. If you buy the special releases, and this beer is a special release, they should offer you an equivalent credit, not force you to buy the products of theirs you don’t want. Have you gone up the chain to discuss it with someone at the brewery?
Already did. That was the response. That’s why I’m seeing if anyone knows of a relevant abc code prohibiting cash refunds on spoiled beer for small manufacturers.
That’s messed-up. They should give you ticket(s) in return, if that’s the game they play with allocation.
Why would you want more of their beer? The odds of infection would be pretty high.
This is one of the reasons why if you want to make sour beers, you need to only make sour beers or have a completely separate facility for them.
I don’t want more. I want a cash refund! They refuse based on the above
That’s terrible customer service. Whether true or not, the legality issue is nothing more than a cop-out. There are lots of weird laws in different states about refunds and returns of alcohol, but anyone reputable will do it, and there would be no way to enforce the law anyway unless an ABC employee happened to be there at the time (almost zero possibility of that). Plus, they could probably declare a recall if that’s what it takes to make returns legal, but they obviously don’t care enough about their reputation to give up any profit made on faulty product. As Rick mentioned (and it’s safe to say he knows a thing or two about brewing), these people don’t know what they’re doing, so hopefully it’s a small amount and a small price to pay for the lesson that they are not worth buying from in the future.
Which brewery is it, btw?
Modern times
So i wrote to the ABC. They said no such rule. As long as the item is spoiled or you are dissatisfied you can ask for any type of refund you want, there’s no restriction, but it’s purely up to the discretion of the licensee on if they want to give a refund.
So, terrible customer service and they lied to you. Nice.
Take the gift card, walk to the bar and sell it to someone for 5 bucks less than face.