We were not impressed with Blue Nose. The tap room is fairly large, looks nice and the brewery is easy to find just off some main roads in a small commercial plaza. The beer however just sub-par. We arrived and found the place empty, it was early afternoon and they’d just opened for the day. The bartender seemed a bit surprised to have guests and honestly didn’t seem happy to see customers. Once we ordered our flight we didn’t see him again until we paid and left. In our four beer sample flight I detected diacetyl in two of them and the other two were thin and had weak aroma and flavor. We had a saison, stout, Belgian Tripel and a Irish red ale and none made me want to try their other beers.
As we sat there, alone, we pondered this issue we’ve seen from time to time. Could it be these brewers are just new to this system and having issues with their early batches, sure, I imagine it would be hard to dump a bad batch when starting out. After all the time and money to get started and get those first batches out to then dump it down the drain, takes courage, and perhaps these brewers thought their customers wouldn’t notice or forgive them a bad batch. Seems risky to me, as putting out bad beer out of the gate would turn at least some customers away from your brand forever.
Our other thought, was the people behind this brewery could not know this beer is bad, because they actually aren’t seasoned brewers. As the craft beer/local beer movement has boomed and breweries start popping up everywhere – we supposed there would be some ambitious persons just trying to catch the bandwagon. Entrepreneurial types that see an opportunity and open a brewery without proper brewing knowledge. The craft beer bubble may burst from over-saturation of brands, but it may simply check itself when these breweries making bad beer close. Hard to say at this point, but bad beer is still out there.
We know nothing about the people behind Blue Nose, just what was in our glass and these are the thoughts that came to mind. I’m not likely to visit their brewery again, but if they pour beer at a fest I attend I may give them another try. I hope the issues with the beer were just inexperience and they get better with time; but their brewery is in an area I rarely see so it would have to be a special trip to visit again and I’m just not that interested.