This content was originally published by the Longmont Observer and is licensed under a Creative Commons license.
Left Hand Brewing, one of Longmont's largest employers, sued White Labs claiming contaminated yeast caused a $2 million recall of stout and two IPAs.
The complaint says White Labs “caused secondary fermentation in beers brewed using that yeast, including Milk Stout Nitro, resulting in over-pressurized bottles, broken bottles, off flavors, and disruption of the distinctive nitrogen cascade.”
The beers affected, according to Left Hand Brewing, where it's flagship Milk Stout Nitro, Extrovert IPA and Warrior Fresh Hop IPA.
Most of the last year the company had many customer complaints about unusually high pressure and gushing beer and an increased alcohol content in it's Milk Stout Nitro. In addition, it's Extrovert IPA "exhibited phenolic characteristics," which affected the taste in a negative way.
The company shut down its operations for two weeks in late 2016 and stopped production on all beer to take apart its production equipment and to rebuild all it's valves and pipe pathways to locate and fix the reasons for the contamination.
“Left Hand’s entire team of brewers and maintenance personnel worked day and night to make sure every single soft gasket, pipe junction, automated venting tank top, and basically every nook and cranny of the brewery was inspected, cleaned, and repaired,” they said.
Eventually, the company conducted a DNA test on Milk Stout Nitro that was already in the stores and they discovered the stout was contaminated by a wild strain of yeast that wasn't fit for brewing beer, namely the Saccharomyces cerevisiae variant diastaticus.
Left Hand consistently found diastaticus in beer brewed with yeast from White Labs.
The claims by Left Hand Brewing include negligence, breach of warranty and a downturn in business saying that "the market share and consistently increasing sales fo Milk Stout Nitro significantly decreased."
Left Hand is the 44th largest craft brewery in the United States and has 11 World Beer Cup awards, 28 Great American Beer Festival medals and 9 European Beer Star awards.
The company is seeking actual, compensatory, punitive and treble damages.
