I had a bit of a disappointing start to my Saturday evening bottled beer at home session this week. I’d picked up a three-pack of different beers from a relatively new micro-brewery (I won’t mention the name of the brewery as this isn’t going to be a happy tale, and I’d rather not prejudice anyone against them for something that could well be beyond their control for all I know) and I decided that I’d give all three of them a go in one evening, then write up a triple tasting notes piece.

Alas, things went badly wrong from the moment I cracked open the first bottle and got a whiff of the sour, over-ripe smell that generally signals Beer Gone Bad (Flemish Reds being the notable exception). I tired a couple of cautious sips and my worst suspicions were confirmed by the unpleasantly vinegary, metallic taste. The beer in question was a dark mild that I’d sampled when I bought the three-pack in question at a farmer’s market type affair back in the Summer, so I knew it really shouldn’t taste like that. Straight down the sink. Strike one.

Bottle number two – a pale ale with a pleasant malt / hop balance – was entirely drinkable, so no problem there.

But then I opened bottle #3 – a 4.7% red-brown ale that I’d also sampled at the time of purchase and rather enjoyed – and the stuff literally oozed from the bottle. Seriously, it was positively gelatinous, with a distinctly unpleasant-looking patchy scum floating on the surface. That one went down the sink with half a kettle of boiling water as a chaser. Strike two and out.

So here’s my first question: can someone more familiar with the perils and pitfalls of the brewing process suggest what was wrong with beer #3? I’m guessing beer #1 was oxidised (?) but I have no idea what would cause the other effect. Is this what’s alluded to when someone says a beer has “gone septic”? Or is it some other side-effect of the yeast used in the bottle conditioning? Or was it a case of a few harmless floaties that I could have safely ignored? Incidentally, all three beers were well within their best-by dates, at four, six and three months, respectively.

And my second question: do you think that I should tell the brewery in question? I’m not going to go around demand a refund or anything; I’m well aware that when it comes to RAIB you pays your money, you takes your chance and the occasional bad bottle is one of the risks of drinking real ale at home (and one obvious advantage of pub drinking over home drinking is that you can take a bad one back to the bar). But if there’s a problem with the brewer’s bottling process, or the yeast strain used in the bottle conditioning, or something technical, then the brewer in question would want t know, right?