THE GIST
"Holy shiiiiit."
So began the text in a provocative screenshot that was circulating on Twitter in mid-December. The image, whose origins and authorship are unknown, claimed to show laboratory test results of a beer from Columbus, Indiana’s 450 North Brewing Company.
The beer in question was Slushy XL Elephant Ears, a “smoothie-style” Berliner Weisse flavored with raspberry, blackberry, graham cracker, cinnamon, and vanilla, and which could be visually mistaken for a grape Slurpee. The release was part of the brewery’s Slushy XL line, a hype-darling series of kettle-soured beers packaged in 16oz cans and flavored heavily with fruit purees after fermentation. The test results showed the beer’s ABV was 2.56%, significantly lower than the 8% ABV listed on the can.
"If they sent this away to another lab the results would be exactly the same," the screenshot read. "Shocking."
Not only had the brewery apparently been wildly incorrect in its ABV calculations, but it was charging customers IPA-level prices—anywhere from $18-$25 per four-pack—that some might be reluctant to pay for such a low-strength beer.
450 North responded via a statement on Instagram posted Dec. 24. Signed by owners David and Brenda Simmons, the post breezily acknowledged the disparity, apologized, and stated the brewery would remove the ABV from its Slushy line until early 2020. It also said the brewery has since adjusted its ABV calculation process to “include any additional adjuncts added post-fermentation.”
"The findings were unexpected," they wrote. "The independent testing of multiple Slushys has determined that our calculation process was critically flawed."
According to Instagram, the brewery has released seven Slushy beers since then, but did not disclose any of their ABVs, or assumed ABVs. The Simmons haven’t addressed the issue since their lone response on Christmas Eve.
WHY IT MATTERS
This isn’t 450 North’s first quality control stumble related to its super-fruited beers. In August 2018, its brewers acknowledged some of its fruited, kettle-soured beer cans might explode if not refrigerated immediately after purchase, because yeast present in the cans could continue to ferment thanks to the the hummingbird-nectar levels of sugar added post-fermentation. Can conditioning isn’t new, but it is a delicate process that takes nuanced attention to allow a beer to finish gracefully—let alone safely. 450 North, however, opted to add levels of fruit that could have been a can’s kryptonite.
“If you want something super fruity, that’s the risk you’ve got to take, it seems like,” 450 North’s assistant brewer Brian Pine told the ABV Chicago podcast at the time. The brewery charges as much as $25 for 16oz four-packs of these beers, noting on Instagram that “the amount of fruit added to our Slushys has always dictated the price.” It’s unclear if that’s specific to actual fruit puree, or fruit juice, which caused the latest problem for the brewery.
But these ABV errors, which the brewery’s Instagram post calls “critically flawed,” raise additional red flags and beg even more questions. Namely, how did the brewery miscalculate its ABVs so drastically? Did it really not know its beers would be less alcoholic following significant additions of fruit? Did it just not care? Do its customers care?
The controversy also raises questions around the Simmons' two other beverage alcohol companies: Simmons Winery and Gnarly Grove Hard Cider. The couple clearly has an understanding of fermentation when it comes to a variety of alcohol categories, so what happened with 450 North?
Those questions can’t be answered here, however, as 450 North did not return messages left with taproom staff, or direct messages on social media.The email address listed on 450 North’s Instagram account is invalid. Additional follow-up calls to the brewery went unanswered; the brewery’s voicemail was also full.
In its statement, the brewery—which opened in 2012 as an offshoot of the family’s winemaking business—writes: “Over the past 7 years, many things have changed. Through the changes, our focus has shifted from simply making good quality beer to pushing the boundaries of what beer can be.”
Those boundaries, it would seem, may come at the expense of drinkers’ safety and the brewers’ integrity.
In an interview with Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine published in early 2019, assistant brewer Brian Pine admitted to some difficulties transitioning from homebrewing to his job at 450 North, his first professional brewing job: “In terms of recipe development, that’s really been the biggest shock. Things don’t scale up linearly when you use the brewing software that’s out there.”
Not only do quality-assurance missteps pose a problem for customers, but some brewers worry these types of public mistakes will draw the undesired attention of regulators.
“One of the pillars of Brewers of Indiana Guild's mission statement is related to quality, and we certainly appreciate that 450 North has taken this issue seriously and are dealing with it promptly and directly,” Rob Caputo, executive director of the Brewers of Indiana Guild, tells GBH. He also notes that the guild has a subsidy program in place with Indianapolis’ Sun King Brewing that defrays the cost of lab tests for small member breweries.
“We take product quality very seriously and have tried to facilitate options to help our brewery members in this area,” Caputo says.
Some posts on social media and beer forums have asked why the ABV disparity matters so much, speculating that customers are angry just because they can’t get as drunk as they thought off the Slushy beers. Whether evidenced via sales data or anecdotes from brewers, ABV clearly makes a difference to consumers, however.
So why does a correct ABV matter?
“First and foremost, it’s the law,” says Jason Perkins, brewmaster at Portland, Maine’s Allagash Brewing Company and chair of the Brewers Association’s Quality Subcommittee. The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), which approves beer labels for interstate sale, requires a beer’s stated ABV to be within a .3% range of its actual, measurable ABV. The TTB can enforce this with periodic brewery audits.
But because 450 North’s beers aren’t sold across state lines, they don’t require TTB approval, which is why it’s perfectly legal for the brewery to remove the ABV listing on its Slushy beers. That scenario creates an additional series of ethical considerations for a business that sells beverages that impact decision-making and motor function.
Perkins says it’s not realistic to expect every small brewery to purchase an Alcolyzer, a multi-thousand-dollar machine that’s the industry standard for measuring alcohol in a beer. Many small breweries instead ship their beer to an outside lab or a larger brewery for testing, or estimate their ABV based on calculations of original and final gravity.
Given the lack of detail from 450 North, the beer community is left in the dark about any standard operating procedures in place at the brewery.
“I don’t know the backstory [with 450 North], but there are plenty of people calculating ABV, just measuring density at the beginning and end of fermentation and using a handful of online calculators. There’s a lot of reasons those can be inaccurate,” Perkins says. “Those calculations are theoretical … They’re great for a homebrewer; they’re great for getting a hypothetical. We use those for our early batches of pilot beers. To get real official alcohol analysis you really need an instrument to do it.”
But you don’t need an expensive instrument—just logic—to understand that adding copious amounts of fruit juices or purees to a beer post-fermentation will dilute its ABV. Still, Perkins says, such a wide ABV disparity—2.65% vs. 8%—likely can’t be attributed solely to the puree’s diluting effects.
For a brewery churning out eight new Slushy can releases on a Friday like 450 North, sending each one to be tested is cumbersome. In addition, the label art that can be important to these styles of beer must be designed and printed weeks in advance of brewers even finishing the beer.
CODO Design, the company that produces 450 North’s can art, says it’s created hundreds of “fun, weird” cans for the brewery over the past eight years. (CODO also lists voluntary disclosure of ABV on beer cans as one of its design best practices.)
450 North’s statement re-commits the brewery to its grueling pace of fruit-slush releases, noting that it will continue its “pursuit to push the limits of beer in an effort to bring you the most innovative products possible.” It also doubled down on phrasing used by the Brewers Association to define and market members like 450 North: “The beauty of independent craft beer is that we are a community bound by our passion for the craft.”
To top it all off, the brewery seems to think that if its products come with a risk of explosion or inconsistent ABV, so be it: “We have made some mistakes in the past, and we’ll probably make some mistakes in the future. However, we have always dealt with adversity in stride and we will do the same now.”
The question is whether customers’ craving for sweet, puree-heavy beers will trump any QA doubts. Comments on 450 North’s Instagram statement show a mix of disappointment (“They definitely knew, they just got caught. Especially for what they charge per beer, they should've been miles ahead of stuff like this. They really need to make it up to customers, there is people that drive hours for it and they've been duped”) and apathy (“Moving on!!! Drop the 9th can and post allotments”).
Having built its popularity by embracing demand for sought-after and traded New England-style IPA and "slushy" beers, 450 North has conditioned fans not to expect any transparency from its beers.
But will they expect it of the brewery?
Words by Kate Bernot