Fresh IPAs getting harder to find

I've learned this lesson too. I try really hard to be the beer nerd and not the beer snob, but I definitely check dates and will refuse plenty based on that (looking for extras for a trade I saw a "local" dipa canned in November - it's probably fine but it won't be great so didn't even grab it). Two things I do a lot: refuse to buy IPAs not in a fridge regardless of the date, and drink more local ipas - blew through a ton of Bitter Valentine over the weekend that was 3-4 days old. Not the best dipa in the world by any means, but it was fresh, juicy and awesome - the best option available for the weekend for sure. A lot of folks sort of rail against homerism and I get that, but local is typically the best option for freshness around where I am.

 

Same problem in many of our craft centric stores. Case stacks of warm hoppy beers, or broken sixer singles selections where it's a real roll of the dice.

 

Over time (and warm temperatures) the beer oxidizes. One aspect of these oxidative reactions is hop aroma/flavor fade.

The IPAs of the 1800s were not aggressively hopped with hops like Centennial, Amarillo, Cascade, Citra, Mosiac,... hops to feature the aroma/flavors of those hops. Modern day American style IPAs are a very different beer from the British IPAs of the 1800s.

Cheers!

 

Those long ago IPA's likely were "infected" with Brettanomyces also. Those long ago IPA's bear little resemblance to modern AIPA's

Today's American IPA's are a different animal, and the aroma and delicate flavors produced by modern hops used in modern late addition techniques fade pretty quickly. It is mainly due to temperature and oxygen that this occurs, but aroma starts to fade the moment the beer comes out of the fermenter no matter what you do.

 

I'm with you on this. I usually find myself looking at several packages trying to find something less than 5 or 6 weeks old. While I do have preferences I'm pretty much just looking for something decently fresh. Last night I wanted IPA but everything at the grocery store was at 8 weeks+ so I ended up ditching the IPA plan and buying Trois Pistoles.

Oh, and I might add there are certain breweries that are repeat offenders when it comes to aged product

 

Well, an old adage proclaims, "overkill is under-rated".

 

Well the oxidization of beer is less in cans than in bottles, as the sealing of cans doesn't allow oxygen to go through, unlike the cap/bottle system. You guys should compare an old Sculpin IPA in a bottle and in a can, both with the same date, see which one retains freshness the best.

 

How those beers were stored from a temperature perspective is also a factor. The bottled Sculpin if it was continuously stored cold may be in better condition than the canned version stored warm.

Needless to say but if the two beers were stored at a common temperature the canned version would likely be in better shape assuming they both had the same TPO (Total Packaged Oxygen) at the time of packaging.

Cheers!

 

Well ultimately in America I hope you guys get what we in France call "appellation d'origine contrôlée" IE a label stating that if you wanna call a beer an "American IPA" it should meet several regulations to guarantee quality (maybe made from American hops, stored at a certain temperature, bottled in containers guaranteeing freshness etc...). We have this in France for cheese, wine, cured meat, biscuits etc... and this is why you can't call a wine Champagne if it hasn't been made in the Champagne region of France. Germany has this for beer (Rieser Weizenbier or Kölsch have this label on the bottle : http://gourmandisesansfrontieres.fr/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/IGP.jpg ), and since it's a guarantee of quality through a respect of the process, brand having this label usually make more money. Of course it shouldn't prevent the US from the creativity that has characterized its craft beer movement from the beginning. But admit that a label meaning that it's been brewed locally, with traceable hops and ingredients, and verifiable storage conditions, would be nice. That could mean for example that you could only call a beer a "West Coast IPA" on the label if it's from California (maybe add Oregon and Washington to be fair ?) with other ingredient/style criterias, to prevent every brewer in the world to call anything a west coast IPA. I believe there's something like this already for Napa Valley wine.

 

I dunno OP, in the Chicago market we are prettayy, prettaaaaay good when it comes to choices and freshness. Maybe you haven't yet found your shop that knows how to manage inventory and freshness, but there are some great options out there. I know I can walk into my local place (in da burbs) and talk to the owner about what just came in, what's coming in that week, etc. My place even puts "NEW" neck hangers on beers that just came in. Awesome. At the very least I know a lot of places you can walk in and find stacks of fresh Goneaway or NvU/Lizard King (now with canning dates! thank you brewers!) so I don't think it's fair to take issue with not getting the freshest beer from Michigan or California when we are considerably spoiled!

Cheeers!

 

I enjoy both. The most recent old IPA I've tried was Sumpin' Extra, which was about 3 and a half months. It's better fresh, but I still very much enjoyed the 3+ month old version. I was still able to taste everything that the fresh one had.

 

Not aiming this at you Jack, but people seem to be hell-bent on making a weird assumption like that.

 

this is why the smaller neighborhood brewery is important to the craft beer drinker. you can stop by for a pint of fresh ipa at ease

 

Yeah, that is why I like to post an explicit mention of that assumption.

I have no idea what value of TPO would be 'representative' for a typical canning line and likewise for a bottling line. There are 'good' bottling/canning lines and there are 'less good' bottling/canning lines.

One brewery that I have high trust for having both high quality bottling and canning lines is Sierra Nevada. I should have high trust for other breweries as well but I am less informed about those breweries.

Cheers!

 

That's the main problem with execessively hoppy American Ales, they are subjectively perishable. Some find them drinkable, others really demand a maxmimum freshess for all the hop character.

This is why it's best to drink the small micro brew beers direct at the source, freshest as can be...All these beer trades insisting on trying the latest and greatest hop bomb, also compromise the freshess of the beer.

If you really want to ease the burden of stale beer, find out how the date codes apply, each brewery has a different code system. Send a kindly e-mail directly to the brewery and they'll tell you how to read the codes properly.

I do think Sierra Beers like Big Foot if you can find them aged on the shelves are nice Once our local safeway blew out six packs of the stuff for 2.99 because they sat so long.

That was years ago and I still remember the hang over like it was yesterday. Another option is home brew some batch of single hop single malt beers, this is fun and it helps better identify characteristics of hops. Some people say one hop tastes one way, and other. But again freshness is also important.

There is nothing like a good simple beer kegged up at home or bottled fresh. Have fun, just keep a log of breweries who are more apt to rotate out product.

 

No problem here with getting fresh IPA's

 

I am learning to appreciate the (very) local made IPAs more because they are often extremely fresh even though they may have quirks about them I don't particularly care for. They are usually (hit and miss) better than the established "accepted quality" regional selections at the local growler (35 taps min) establishments and always better than.... bottles, who da F drinks IPAs from bottles? That would be akin to trying to enjoy some good (crusty) bread that spent the last 48 hours in a plastic bag with a twister seal on it.
We're talkin within 1 week out from being kegged (not tapped) to a max of 3 weeks.

 

I second the "stay local" advice on fresh IPA's.

I get Alesmith, Modern Times, Stone on the shelf and it's usually 2 weeks old.

Firestone Walker a bit trickier to find fresh, but I mostly go for Double Jack anyway, and for me I can drink that up to 3 months old; still delicious to me.

 

Honestly, that's sounds like an issue with the retailer more than the brewery. We get deliveries twice a week from our BP distributor, so I order a 7-10 day supply. If we sell 3 cases of Sculpin in a week I'll make sure we have 3-4 on hand for the upcoming week (in case the distributor is out of stock for a few days), and even if sales dip a little the beer will never be on our shelves more than 2 weeks. Granted there's not a lot I can do if the distributor is shipping old product, but that happens surprisingly rarely with BP beers.

They were aggressively hopped (at a rate of 4-8 pounds per barrel), but from what I've read it was mostly bittering additions for the sake of preservation and balancing the malt sweetness. Also, aged or "stale" beer infected with brett was all the rage in England in the early 1800's, and by some accounts (including Mitch Steele's book on IPA), the British IPAs were aged for up to a year even before being shipped around the world. Knowing that, it's incredibly likely that the beer being sent to India had a strong brett presence, and the beer would have been leathery and funky in addition to any other effects of aging in a sweltering cargo hold for weeks or months.

I'm imagining they would have tasted something like a pale, bitter version of Gale's Prize Old Ale rather than what we think of as "modern" English IPAs, which have suffered from a couple hundred years of weird tax laws resulting in lower ABVs as well as ingredient shortages during the two world wars.

edit: long story short (sorry for rambling), they were intensely hoppy and bitter, but they weren't using the hops for their aroma characteristics the way we are now.

 

As I posted: "The IPAs of the 1800s were not aggressively hopped with hops like Centennial, Amarillo, Cascade, Citra, Mosiac,... hops to feature the aroma/flavors of those hops."
Thank you for agreeing with my post.

Cheers!