The Great Hop Degradation Debate

Hops fade, and I think that's completely proven. Anyone denying that is in denial. lol How long until though? I guess that depends on how rigorously it was hopped. But, I say that within 2-3 months would be the best time to enjoy any IPA, but I think for the most part you'll still have an enjoyable IPA up to 5-6 months, albeit not as much as say 1-3 months.

EDIT: Personally, I would avoid 5-6 month old regular IPA, but DIPA I could do; I think they hold up longer, and I don't mind a more malty DIPA.

 

I'm not positive, but I think Houblon Chouffe is botle conditioned, along with some other Belgian IPAs. So sure, the hops will fade a little, but the other charecteristics will develop over time.

As for regular IPAs, I don't mind a few months on them. If I had a choice, they would all be consumed within a few weeks of bottling. I'll have to try a blind test with 2 of the same beer a few months apart to see if I could tell. I'm not claiming my palate is as refined as some people on here, but I'm pretty sure I would be able to tell the difference between the same beer at 2 weeks and at 6 months. I have a 6 month old Heady that I forgot about, anyone want to send me a fresh one for comparison?

 

I usually try to buy IPAs that are not over 3-4 months old. Most brewery websites I have visited say to drink within that time frame for "brewery fresh taste." In my personal experience, I find that DIPAs hops fade much much quicker than regular IPAs. The extreme malts in DIPAs tend to take over much quicker. They tend to drink more like Barley Wines after awhile.

 

The hop oils are volatile and degrade easily. Oxidation due to O2 in the headspace is one reason. Heat is another. Even vibration will break those down.

Want to read more?
http://www.realbeer.com/hops/aroma.html

 

I like my IPA's fresh as I can get them, and I'm lumping IPA's and DIPA's into the mix as a whole. IMO really Hop Forward fruity brews fall off faster than heavy resinous brews. I like brews like Pliny, Flower Power, Heady Topper, Hopslam, Sweetwater and the like preferably under 30 days old. There's no magical day when they turn to malt and lose that hop forward tropical bite, but they're different at 60 days than they are at 30, still good stuff but not at peak. Brews like Smuttynose, Furious, Two Hearted, Hopsickle, Mongo have a little more leeway, they hang in there a little longer and if there is a hop shift for me it's harder to detect. I've experienced this hoarding Hopslam, and after 3 months I knew I should have not stored a few, same with Flower Power, the fresher the better as this one shifts quickly certainly better at 30 days. Just an opinion, can't prove or disprove anything here, but aging IPA's is generally a bad idea. I wouldn't buy a 4 month old Hopslam if I came across it, I know it would suck as compared to being fresh and they're not discounting the price either.

 

I find that a lot of the aroma and flavor will first start to noticeably degrade between 1-3 months. After 3 months it is noticeably less hoppy, while retaining most of its bitterness. Anything significantly dry hopped IPA or DIPA will be significantly more aromatic and robust in the first 6 weeks IMO. It also seems to me that a lot of the American Hop C hop varieties (Cascade, Centennial, Colombus) fade faster than some of the Noble Hops (Saaz, Hallertau, ect).

If I'm spending my hard earned money on a good IPA I prefer to invest in something within 6-8 weeks as it will be better. However I would never turn down or be upset with drinking an IPA within 6 months of its bottle date.

 

The issue to me is when it stops being recognizable as the beer in question; and that particular point depends on the beer. I just had some Flower Power last week pushing the 60 day mark- of course it wasn't as intense as when the shipment was first dropped at the store, but those tropical fruity FP qualities were still there and I enjoyed drinking them. That one I might push to 3 months. Lagunitas beers also seem to hold up to at least 3 months. I've had ST 2XIPA at 3-4 months, though, and it seemed like a completely different beer with no real aroma to speak of- so that one I'll only jump on at less than 2 months, as much as I enjoy it.

Fresher is definitely better, but how long to go beyond that I'll take on a case by case basis. I'm not sure that people need their beers to be screaming with raw hop power (not that that's a bad thing); I think it's more that they want them to retain those qualities that they liked about them in the first place.

 

IMO, its really not about the fading of the hops as much as off flavors due to oxidation. For the most part hop flavor doesn't seem to fade all that much (some beers more than others) within two months if reasonably stored, but I can tell that many IPA's and pale ales start to take on a grassy, musty, caramelly flavor around the 2 month mark. Last week, I bought a sixer of Racer5 that was bottled on 5/25, and you could tell it was just starting to turn - not enough to make the experience unenjoyable, but enough to notice.

I would bet most craft drinkers (and many beer geeks) don't know the difference between fresh hop flavors and stale flavors as there is crossover in flavor profiles - it comes with experience with that particular beer. Some brewers are better at keeping out oxygen than others, so every IPA is different.

 

It's a dilemma if you look at it from the brewer point too. Do you saturate the market if you could and risk having slightly older brews hanging around and being compared to a lower volume fresher IPA? You could lose customers that way too. Or do you track what you sell and how quickly you sell, and stick to that formula, keeping it on the cusp of being out of stock pretty quickly and leave guys wanting more volume? I'm thinking of Flower Power. When I'm home to PA I always get fresh case bought at Joe Canals in Lawrenceville, they usually get 15 cases give or take early in the month every month, and it's gone pretty quick. They could sell more I'm sure, but if they double the allotment it might sit a bit.

 

I remember some talk on the Mid-Atlantic boards that FP is intentionally made in phases, not brewed continually, for just that reason. I guess they are trying to be at the point where they are delivering a fresh batch when the old one is still drinking nicely. Here in NJ there are definitely gaps for a while when I don't see any, but I like the concept; it just seems to need some tweaking.

 

If it's more than 2-3 months old, I pour it into a cup and stick a baby pine cone in it.

 

How in the world do you forget a Heady?

 

This is an interesting set of questions, and something I think about relatively often, because I admit that I'm one of those people who claims to have noticed a significant difference between the same beer at say, 2-3 weeks, and 6-8 weeks. Not that any beer became a shell of its former self in such a short time period, but that there definitely is a difference, on some level. My two cents: there's another couple of factors to take into consideration.

One is, in the process of "deteriorating," hop characters change—and in some cases, not in a bad way. I actually talked to a friend of mine who works for a brewery in New York City about a single-hop beer they made, and how I wasn't crazy about it super-fresh (just astringent). He agreed, but said that about 3 months after brewing, the beer was phenomenal. Sorachi Ace is a hop varietal that goes through an interesting shift, in my opinion. Early on, it's light and lemony, and later on it turns into this interesting, sweet lemongrass / coconutty kind of profile. I'm sure other varieties go through different shifts, and the types of hops used in a hop-forward beer will affect how you answer these questions.

Another factor is, how the hops are used. We all know that some hops are preferred for bittering but not flavoring, flavoring but not aroma, aroma but not bittering, etc. That's at least in part because of the balance of different compounds within the hops, and I'm guessing that boiling at different temperatures and periods of time will bring out more or less of different compounds, hence some being good for flavor but not bittering (I'm assuming here that some flavoring-preferred hops elicit some off flavors and aromas when boiled too hot or early).

So, the type of hops, along with the treatment of those hops, will also affect how you perceive hop-forward beers "fall off," retain flavors, or whatever it is they do. I personally am under the impression that the impact of aroma, especially from dry-hopping (and some of the resinous bitterness that can come from that, too), is what will fall off the fastest with hop-forward beers. Characteristics attributed to dry-hopping seem to be most volatile to me.

 

Excellent question!

 

I live in CA, we dont drink IPAs, more than 23 hours old.

Cheers!

 

Depending on state laws and individual contracts, of course, but it is generally the industry convention that the distributor is responsible for keeping fresh beer on the shelves, pulling old stock and replacing it. In some cases the brewer might share or cover the cost. Here's some older (1980's) language in an A-B contract with its wholesalers as an example:

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In no event shall over-age Product (according to age standards published from time to time by Anheuser-Busch) reach the consuming public. If any over-age Product is found in the possession of wholesaler or in the possession of a retailer to whom wholesaler sold such Product, wholesaler agrees, unless prohibited by law, to destroy such over-age Product in accordance with all applicable laws and regulations, and to replace any such Product which had been in the possession of a retailer with fresh Product at no cost to the retailer. Wholesaler's cost of destroying and replacing over-age Product shall be borne by wholesaler or by Anheuser-Busch, depending upon which party was responsible for the over-age condition.​

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That's not to say the distributors always carry out their responsibility, or that retailers don't have to do their own monitoring, etc. And, sadly, retailers often have a difficult time getting credit or fresh replacement beer.

 

I can only speak from experience. I had a month old White Rajah and I had a 2 week old White Rajah. It was noticeable less aromatic. I had a year old Lake Erie Monster that surprisingly retained some hop bite.

 

I forgot about it in the back of my fridge for a few months and then just kept putting off drinking it. Might just shotgun it and see how it goes.