Another day, another craft beer recall.
Real Ale Brewing Co. announced Tuesday that it was issuing a “precautionary recall” of 11,000 cases — about 800 barrels — of two of its year-round brands due to a potential glass defect.
The Blanco, Texas-based brewery has pulled 6-packs of Devil’s Backbone Belgian-style tripel delivered to retail stores in North Texas and 12-packs of Hans’ Pils 12-packs delivered in Austin, San Antonio and the Hill Country areas, according to a release on the brewery’s website.
“Although the likelihood of a defective bottle being in the market is very low (significantly less than 1%), Real Ale is issuing this precautionary recall to ensure the safety of consumers,” the company wrote via its website. “Of approximately 11,000 cases of beer produced using the affected glass, fewer than 500 cases were delivered to Texas retail accounts. The majority of the affected cases were quarantined at the brewery or at the distributor’s warehouses once the issue was identified and did not reach retail stores. There have been no reports of injury or defective bottles from consumers at this time.”
So what happened?
“During inspection of packaged beer at the brewery, Quality personnel identified a defect in the bottles that could result in small pieces of glass breaking off and falling into the bottle,” the release said. “The affected bottles, from a third party supplier, are limited to a single glass production date.”
The recall includes:
- Devil’s Backbone 6-pack bottles with a best by date of March 13, 2017, timestamped between 16:20 and 23:00 and distributed in Dallas, Abilene, Denton and Waco.
- All Devil’s Backbone 6-pack bottles with a best by date of March 20, 2017 that were distributed in Dallas, Fort Worth, Commerce and Waco.
- All Han’s Pils 12-pack bottles with a best-by date of January 20, 2017 that were released in Austin, Llano and San Antonio.
In a conversation with Brewbound, Real Ale chief operations officer Tim Schwartz said the company has since narrowed down the number of affected cases to 8,000. He added that the brewery has yet to receive a consumer complaints.
“We’re just being extra cautious right now,” he said. “Basically, everything actually went pretty well on our end at keeping this contained.”
However, Schwartz told Brewbound that the brewery is still conducting its investigation of what happened and how 500 cases ended up making it to retail.
Real Ale is issuing refunds for beers — via the refunds@realalebrewing.com address — within the recall “by providing a picture of the back label and the name of the retail account where they bought the product.”
Real Ale is the second brewery this week to withdraw beer from the marketplace
On Monday, Chicago’s Revolution Brewing recalled 10,000 barrels of beer due to off-flavors that had developed in six of the company’s most popular beers (Anti Hero IPA, Fist City Pale Ale, Cross of Gold Ale, Mosaic Hero IPA, Eugene Porter, and Unsessionable Imperial IPA).
The latest recalls follow the January pullback of Goose Island’s popular Bourbon County Barleywine and Bourbon County Coffee variants, which had developed off-flavors. The company offered refunds to customers who had purchased those beers as well as refunds for its original Bourbon County Brand Stout and Proprietor’s Bourbon County Brand Stout, which developed similar off flavors, the company said in July.
In September, Kentucky’s Alltech Lexington Brewing recalled more than 80 days worth of its flagship Kentucky Bourbon Ale and seasonal Kentucky Pumpkin Barrel Ale beers.