Cardboard in beer???

Ok, so no joke. On the evening on the December 27, 2007, my girlfriend and I had just sat down for an evening brew, Sam Adams of course. Close to the end of her first brew she near coughed something out of her mouth. We went quick to the kitchen and dumped out the remainder of the beer into a glass. The beer was very dirty and filled with debris. My first thought was that it was just scrapings from the bottom of the brewing kettle, little left over bits of barely and hops. Well that wasn’t the case at all….

Much to our surprise we saw a mass of something stuck to the inside of the bottle. We took out a steak knife and dug out the debris. Even more to our surprise we found that it was card board! Painted on and moldy card board inside the beer bottle!

Luckily my girlfriend did not get sick from drinking most of this bottle of beer. I went straight to the bottle and found an 800 number. Upon calling the number an automated man of sorts told me it was after hours and suggested when I could call back. He also gave me an emergency 800 number that I could call, so I did.

I talked with a man named Clayton. I imagine my call was probably the highlight of his Thursday evening. He sounded quite surprised at what we had found and took a bunch of information down from me and about our situation. He told me that I should be receiving a phone call sometime the next day, and suggested that it would after noon.

Well here we are a week late and that call has not come. I did call the Boston based beer company back today and was directed to someone’s voicemail. I left them with all my information and hope to hear back soon. I will certainly let you know once I hear back!

Also, what do you think I should do? Leave a comment and let me know.

UPDATE: They called me!

Ok so yesterday (finally!) I got a phone call from a guy in their public relations department at the Boston Beer Company. They are going to send me a box and with a pre-paid shipping label they want me to send back to them the bottle and card board. They he also said that they were going to get the ball rolling on cutting me a check for a replacement 12 pack. Not really too exciting, but they did finally call me back. Its only taken about 3 weeks to hear back from them. This all went down on December 27th of 07. Here we are today, 1/16/08 and I heard from them yesterday afternoon. He did apologize for taking so long to get back to me and that he was just getting back to work this week. Must be nice to have a 3 week holiday vacation.

I’ll post more when I know more!

UPDATE: Faith restored!

So remember this whole story? Well now here we are mid March and I finally got a letter from the Boston Beer Company. A very nice letter indeed signed by the man himself, Jim Koch. Also enclosed was a check for the refund of the purchased beer which was also signed by Jim. It wasn’t a printed check either, it was a hand written check.

I must say, however long this did take, and thankfully no one was harmed during the drinking of this beer. I feel that I got a very thoughtful and well written letter from a very busy guy and this certainly restores my faith in the Boston Beer Company.

Cheers!

~ by AJ on January 5, 2008.