This weekend I was at a party and, after indulging in some other spirits, I decided to try a Fat Tire Amber Ale. I opened the bottle myself (it was firmly sealed) and took a drink… It tasted like a mixture of rubber and floral scented air freshner. I was slightly confused at the time and thought to myself “fat tire… tire… maybe it’s suppossed to taste like rubber!” So I took a few more sips and then noticed my lips and throat were burning so, finally realizing something was amiss, I convinced someone else to try it. They immediately realized it was wrong and assumed I was retarded for continuing to drink it.
At the time I felt alright and just assumed that it was a bad batch, nothing too bad. Several hours later, however, (this is the TMI part) I started sweating profusely then had diarrhea… for 6 hours. The odd thing was that it wasn’t a water based compound coming out–it appeared to be a hydrophobic compound that formed pretty micelles on the top of the toilet water. This was about a week ago and I’m fine now (so this is not seeking medical nor legal advice–I survived and have no plans to pursue it further) but I am curious WTF I drank? My initial thought is that it was some type of cleaning solution used to sterilize the bottles but perhaps someone else can unearth something about this.
Contact the brewery immediately. They will want the all of the information on the bottle, any codes, etc, so that they can contact distributors to track down that shipment and put it on a hold. They will also probably want any unopened bottles from the same package.
Just got done calling the brewery actually. I was completely unhelpful b/c I was halfway across the country when it happened so have no information on the case numbers, etc and that was the only beer in the case that was like that. In turn, she was also unhelpful by replying that she had no information on what it could have been but that they would be getting back in contact with me.
Rubbery off-odors can be caused by a few different sulfidic compounds. As Philster noted it could be light-struck, even brown bottles will eventually succumb especially under fluorescent light.
‘Rubbery’ is also a characteristic often caused by autolysed dead yeast.
The burning lips and throat is what puzzles me, especially when there was only one bottle in the case like that. I would normally associate that with an improperly rinsed bright tank or something like that, but then all bottles in the case would be affected.
Most breweries use chlorine dioxide to rinse/sanitize their bottles, which is pretty unstable and breaks down into harmless compounds rather quickly, so we can probably rule out any residual cleaning agent in the bottle.
There are no known human pathogens that can survive in beer due to the alcohol content and low pH, so you will survive. Unless, of course, it was some sort of chemical contamination, but I can’t figure out how only one bottle in a case would be contaminated.
Yeah, it really has me puzzled. What “came out” was pretty much exactly like vegetable oil in appearance and interaction with water. It also still had a very strong floral/rubbery odor. At the time I wasn’t really concerned at all since it was obviously not being absorbed by my GI tract.
I used to like Fat Tire Amber. The last two 6 packs I bought, about 2 months apart, were very “skunky”. I bought them both from different, high volume stores, so they weren’t out of date.
Something has happened to Fat Tire’s quality control.
Just wanted to say “too bad” regarding your experience. Fat Tire was my beer of choice while living in Oregon. If you get the chance, try not to be afraid to try it again.