Bad beer costs brewery $1m
A WA beer maker whose motto is "brewed by fussy bastards" yesterday decided to dump more than 500,000 litres of beer after testers deemed it unworthy of shipment.
Blaming a "processing fault" caused by new equipment, Gage Roads Brewing opted not to bottle the equivalent of 70,000 cartons of beer it had made for contract customers such as Woolworths and its own craft brands.
Another 70,000 carton equivalents would also not make it to market because of delays caused by the mishap, costing the Palmyra brewer more than $1 million in lost profit.
"It takes about two weeks to produce beer," managing director John Hoedemaker said. "As of this morning, we decided we didn't really feel that that product was meeting our standard. We weren't proud enough to sell that to the public, so we've decided to withdraw that from sale."
Mr Hoedemaker declined to elaborate on the cause of the problem, or what effect it had on the beer. A company statement to the stock exchange said the fault occurred during commissioning of items for its German brew house.
He was also cagey on how the beer was disposed, except to say it went through an industrial waste system. Mr Hoedemaker said customers would not be left short of product.
