This is kind of scary, but I’m glad they’re stepping up to let people know about this rather than try and brush it under the rug. I just wanted to re-post the information here in case anyone reading might want to check their fridge or let their friends know. A good chunk of the news release is below, and you can read it yourself here.
During a routine bottle inspection at one of our breweries, we detected possible defects in a small percentage of bottles resulting in the random presence of bits of glass, most the size of grains of sand, but some small slivers in some bottles as well. Based on this sample, we quickly began testing bottles of Samuel Adams at all of our breweries and identified that the problem appeared to be isolated to a single glass plant of the five that supply us.
We assembled a panel of food safety, medical and packaging experts including a medical doctor who have thoroughly evaluated the samples. People who bite or swallow a fragment could possibly be injured. While the possibility of injury to an individual consumer is very low and the Company has had no reports of any injury, we do know that the risk is not zero, so we are voluntarily recalling all products in bottles from this specific glass plant that we believe could possibly be affected. While we believe that the number of bottles that actually contain glass is significantly less than 1% of the bottles we are recalling, we are taking this measure to protect the safety of our drinkers.
Bottles made in other glass plants that supply us have not shown defects. The potentially affected bottles are easily identified by a raised letter and number visible on the bottom edge of the bottle. Affected bottles are embossed with the digits “N35” followed by the letters “OI”. Please see the photo below. Bottles with this coding should not be drunk.