How important are Freshness Dates to you?

Or when the beer guy honestly tells you “we just got this new beer in” and it's already almost a year old?

 

Can you explain this? Are you talking about the German domestic market? (I thought date coding was mandatory there?). Why would unpasteurized beer be 3-4 months old?

The vast majority of "craft breweries" in the US are not set up for pasteurization, of course, and lots of their - especially self-distributing breweries - are very fresh.

Yup, as someone who shops for beer weekdays mid-afternoon and so often come across the stacks of cases where the distributor's employees have left them in aisle, I've seen that happen a number of times.

 

I voted for two as I think they are related, very important period and depends on the beer is refrigerated. For Hoppy beers, they are important period and so is refrigeration. If I have two beers with the same freshness, but one is in the fridge, I'll choose the refrigerated option. Lagers should also be fresh and refrigerated. For dark beers, I may care a little less about refrigeration as long as its reasonably fresh 12+ months old (unless it's a big ol' imperial stout that they aged gracefully for me).

 

I apologize, the way I wrote this is confusing. What I meant is that for some of the non-pasteurized beers, they don't really stay "fresh" beyond 3 to 4 months after bottling. Those are often not distributed outside the regional area of the brewery. They always have some kind of date code (however obscure they may be), and I believe this date code is mandatory.

 

I was going to say the latter as well. I actually like to look for “shelf cellared” beers in certain styles, particularly Quads and BSDAs.

 

Depends on the style and depends on refrigeration.

For hazy IPAs, if they've been kept cold their whole life, I'm not too concerned. Under 4 months is preferable, but I've had examples that were great after 7+.

For "clear", West Coast-style IPAs, I do prefer them under a month old, refrigerated.

For stouts, under a year is ideal. Under 3 years is important to me. "Adjunct" stouts seem to be best under 2 years.

For saisons that haven't been oak-aged, under a year is ideal.

For oak-aged saiaons and wild ales, under 10 years is ideal. With fruit, under 3 years seems best, but sometimes they evolve nicely.

For oak-aged barleywines, it depends, 4-10 years.

For lambic, I don't care. For as long as the cork will hold up.

 

I just gotta ask: you think that West Coast IPAs fade quicker than NEIPAs?

Cheers!

 

I can report that this is most definitely the case with my homebrewed beers.

Of late I have gotten a bit 'tired' of commercially brewed Juicy/Hazy IPAs and the situation that they suffer from hop fade quickly has provide me with increased motivation to no longer homebrew Juicy/Hazy IPAs. My last batch of Juicy/Hazy IPA was fall of 2018, my clone of Weldwerks Juicy Bits IPA. That batch turned out very well but...

Having stated the above I did recently purchase a four-pack of Weldwerks DDH Juicy Bits since it just recently was introduced to the Philly area market. I was curious to see how close my above discussed clone of Juicy Bits came to the commercial version. I will be discussing this beer in the next NBW thread.

Cheers!

 

I get what you are saying here and to an extent I agree with you but...

My most recent homebrewed hoppy beer was my clone of Pliny the Elder and I used a lot of dry hops for that beer. For comparison purposes the amount of dry hops for my batches of Juicy Bits and Pliny the Elder (5 gallon batches):

Juicy Bits: 5 ounces of hops for dry hopping
Pliny the Elder: 4 ounces of hops for dry hopping

So, yes technically more hops for dry hopping the Juicy Bits but I still used quite a bit for Pliny the Elder. The Juicy Bits was much more sensitive to hop fade (hop aroma fade) in comparison to Pliny the Elder.

Maybe the fact that there is a lot of protein - polyphenol complexes in the Juicy Bits has an impact here?

Also a difference in yeast strain (Juicy Bits - London III vs. Pliny the Elder - Chico yeast) might have some influence here?

It seems popular to concentrate on a single aspect at times. I sometimes (often?) do this as well.

The best person to respond to your query is likely Scott Janish. He has done a lot of research on Juicy/Hazy IPA brewing (but I sometimes find his 'findings' to be contradictory).

No fast and easy answer here?

Cheers!

 

In my experience, I've found that they don't hold up nearly as long. I'm not sure if this is because the NEIPAs have all those volatile oils and terpenes that preserve it or mask any aging, or if it has to do with the majority of the hops being boiled early in WCIPAs, but I've noticed that the bright freshness of the hops falls off and fades dramatically faster in West Coast-style IPAs. This is just my experience, but it seems pretty consistent.

 

FWIW your experience is 180 degrees from my experience.

Cheers!

 

I've talked to quite a few people about this - including a couple brewer friends, and it seems to be split 50/50. I've had some swear that NEIPAs fall off quicker, and probably just as many in the WCIPA camp. I wouldn't say there's a right or wrong answer, but that's just my experience. Maybe a good idea for a BA poll. Cheers!

 

Obviously you're not going to know if that's what the retailer did. It's been my experience that when the retailer has six month or older beer consistently on the shelves, they've got it in the cooler too. That would be a sign you need to shop elsewhere.

 

I would prefer a clear understandable date format. But only super crucial for some styles. Ran into a different problem when stationed in Germany; would run across to the Hypermarkets in France & all the Belgian beers seemed to young. After a while, I would just buy the tried & true ( Chimnay usually ) & just try to ignore them as long as I could in my Keller

 

For my money, neipas command a premium primarily because of the exceptionally robust volatile hop expression that the good ones convey, and that disappears quickly in my experience. At which point the beer isn't really worth the premium anymore. I feel the same way about PtE, at 2-3 weeks it is an absolute no brained totally worth the premium price. At 5+ weeks I'm more likely to go in for a more typical and lower priced west coast option.

I also don't particularly like neipas so my opinion is probably biased but I just think that the one aspect that I've really appreciated out of the few examples I really enjoyed (that massive aromatic hop explosion) fades fast and then I'm just left with a hoppy beer that is probably a little less bitter than I want and more filling

 

Edit: Fixed critical typo that changed the entire meaning of the sentence.

 

I picked depends on style. But I also think individual beer matters too. There are some ipas that hold up better than others. Same goes for other certain beers within a style but that’s an easy one to mention.

On the topic of dates figure you may know this one so I don’t have to email them. Do you know how far out sky fox dates their cans @JackHorzempa or anyone else?

 

It frustrating. Like all of a sudden Surly Furious and Abrasive are brand new on the shelf and they’re already 2 months old. Now most beer drinkers here have never heard of Surly and have no idea how good these beers can be or were as the case may be. Now it’ll be a turd, anyone who buys it will not be impressed and very likely will turn to local breweries not realizing that freshness of the product to style is vital. They just don’t know, I certainly didn’t before I found this site and tried a ton of beers from out of the area. Surly is doomed to fail just like the ton of Cali beers that used to be on the shelf here and are no longer because they turned too slow, they clogged up the shelves and killed cash flow. Gone.