What is the new "FRESH"?

Jack I happen to have had a bells two hearted at around the end of it's shelf life and it drank just fine IMO. In fact it held up very well. In my opinion 90 days is fresh, past 90 days is on the decline and after 5 months it's every beer for itself as two hearted proved that to me.

 

Maria, we all have our own unique palate and our own expectations in what we desire in a given beer. I personally choose to not drink a Bell's Two Hearted that is over 3 months old; the hop aroma is too diminished at that point for my liking. IMO, the Bell's stated 6 month best by timeframe for Two Hearted is irresponsible.

Cheers!

 

Stone says it's a month... so it's a month

 

I think you need to distinguish "maintaining quality" vs. "maintaining optimal" flavor.

Almost all IPAs are going to taste significantly different (and usually in a negative way) 30+ days after bottling/canning. The hop aroma and flavor will decline significantly. The beer won't be "bad" but it certainly won't taste like it did fresh out of the tank, or within days of packaging.

Whether or not the beer is "undrinkable" after 30 days is another story.

 

different for ever beer.
The Bot and HT, no more than 3 weeks .

 

Fine, if there is a significant decline after thirty days, it should not be bottled and distributed. By the time it goes through the distribution channel it would have an effective shelf life of a week.

 

Hoppy or not, any beer will taste different with age. It never ceases to amaze me how people will post at length about how IPAs, DIPAs, TIPAs(?) "fall off" after a month or so, and those same people and many others will turn around and talk about how Imperial Stouts get better 1 year later.

For me, I love certain IPAs and DIPAs fresh, others aged. Hi-Res is the only "Triple-IPA" that I've enjoyed fresh, while Devil Dancer I FAR preferred aged several months (god, that was good after some time). The hops don't fall off. The flavor evolves. The malt profile begins to develop new tastes. The hop profile becomes more nuanced, possibly subtle, but it doesn't go away. It becomes something new. Sometimes it becomes something awesomely new. Sometimes, yes, it goes bad. But it's not a universal thing.

 

I'm 100% sure this has been covered before, but I can't find it and I'd like some fresh opinions..no pun intended.

When you go in to your favorite bottle shop and are lucky enough to find hard to get IPAs or other beers that don't necessarily age well, what's your cutoff on how old they are? 30 days? 60 days? 90 days?

Obviously some hold up better than others, but just curious.

 

Fresh for me is under 30 days old, yeah I will still drink older beers but if your saying fresh it better be less than 30 days old.

 

Hoppy stuff - the fresher the better obviously (i.e. choice between week old and five weeks old of the same thing, should be a no-brainer). Different people are going to have different opinions about what's acceptable. For me:

Less than 2 weeks: perfect
2 - 4 weeks: very good
4-12 weeks: sliding scale, and some beers hold up better than others, but will definitely drink beers in this range
3-6 months: unlikely to buy unless it's something I'm never going to get to try again
Older than 6 months: no

Beers like RIS, quads, sours etc - age not really a concern unless it's brewed with an adjunct that could fade. I.e. FBS fresh will have a strong coffee flavor. Year old FBS will taste good, but coffee will have faded

 

I usually follow the truck from the brewery/distributor. If it’s older than about 15-20 minutes it’s too old for me.

 

My rule is 30 days if its something I'll see again (like Maine Lunch - which never lasts close to that long on the shelf anyway).

 

IPAs are fresh within 30 days for me and I usually don't venture past 90 days on a purchase of one.

 

A month. Some leeway can be given depending on my fridge.
This only applies to hop centric beers...god I feel like a douche bag for using the term hop centric.

 

The only thing I'll add here is that certain extremely well made IPAs (usually double or triple IPAs) can be had months and months later and still be good in a different way. I've had year old War Mullet and 4-5 month old Exponential Hoppiness and they were certainly not "hoppy" but still interesting and worth drinking.

 

I recently got some Jai Alai from a friend a couple weeks ago and normally it is very good, this pack was horrible to me...came to find out they were from March, so that beer certainly didn't keep well.

 

Hoppy beers, up to 3 months, which admittedly can be a gamble but I'm rarely disappointed in that range. I guess I'm just not that picky, or don't have a terribly refined palate.

Just about everything else that doesn't age well, I go up to 4 months typically.

Honestly, it's very hard to find any beers on the shelf here that are a month old or less (save local breweries of course). Far more typical is a 50/50 split between finding beer in the 2-4 month range or finding beer grossly past it's best-by or packaged date (also known to me as the lazy/apathetic/greedy retailer range).

 

Wort.

 

Yeah Jai Alai falls off dramatically after 2 months. Even after a month it goes from being awesome to ok.
I had some 2 month old jai alai recently and the only way it was drinkable was with spicy food. It was kept on the shelves the majority of it's life I'd imagine, though it was in the cooler when I purchased it.

 

One month, maybe a little more if it's being refrigerated (still kills me that Coors will be in the cooler while, say, Dirt Wolf is sitting on a shelf).