Your Sad Beer Pictures

Well, on the bright side at least it's in the cooler. I'd still consider buying it that being the case, although if that is a fresh drop of Citra I'd certainly pick that up instead.

 

No Kern love in your area? Coming up on 4 months old. One of my Citra cans did not make to journey to Korea. My first can incident in my checked bags. Eleven survived.

 

What's wrong with a 4 month old beer in the cooler at a beer store?

I bet you I can find a couple 2 year old ipas if I go digging.

 

Heck, you can probably find two year old IPAs sitting on a warm shelf at Total Wine.

 

Probably, one of my favorite stores is a large local liquor store with a real wild beer buyer and they've definitely got some 2021 beers on the shelves. Might even find a 2020 can or bottle if I scrape

 

I'd give the Winter Ale a flyer at $2 a can. At $4.50 a can, not a chance.

Is this Bradley's?

 

Personally i think that if your beers aren't 90% as good as the day they were canned after 6 months of refrigeration then you shouldn't package them and should probably put some time in correcting your packaging QC.

And if a 5 month old beer is an affront to your sensibilities you should probably stick to direct purchases from breweries.

I can understand choosing not to buy a 5 month old beer, but holding the entire beer retail sector to that kind of standard basically destroys the viability of beer retail.

 

I’m with Raul on this one. I won’t even think about purchasing a 4pk or 1 can that’s a month & half plus out. I see it all the time, someone grabbing an old ipa or whatever off the shelves. Not even looking for a can date. Yes some of my cans inside my fridge have gotten past a month and half waiting to be opened. And they will get opened before I open any newer cans do. All or most will taste and smell different after a month or so. If you’re into that then go for it. The drink before date is usually around 4 or 6 months. No thanks. The fresher the better.

 

No one's saying you should buy beer that you don't want to buy. Just that a 5 month old beer in a store's cooler isn't "sad" any more than the whole reality of retail is sad. It's just the reality of trying to manage thousands of brands and fickle consumers.

If this was at the brewery then yeah, I could see your point. But if you're at a store just buy the stuff that meets your freshness criteria and realize that they aren't going to be able to keep everything hyper fresh without jacking up the already sky high prices.

The reality is that there's too much beer on store shelves. But if retailers do the responsible thing (from a beer freshness perspective) and drop most of their stock then people complain they don't have enough variety. So I'm not really sure what you want them to do.

And you seem to get most of your beers direct from the brewery, which is what you need to do if that level of freshness is important to you. That's the beauty of the brewery explosion, if the freshness level present in beer retail doesn't meet your standards you can go straight to the source more easily than ever

 

And this is what I do these days. But direct from the breweries. I got 3 all 2.5 miles or less away. One I have them ship. The other is driving distance.

 

Would I deliberately purchase a five (now six) month old IPA? Never!

Am I appreciative and thrilled to receive a five (now six) month old IPA I had wanted to try from a friend? Certainly!

Context is everything.

 

All brewery, fresh from the source. I can't think of the last time I bought a beer from a store. I guess it's now a habit.

 

Lucky you. Wish I lived near a decent brewery and could just walk in and do my main purchasing.

Instead I have been ordering beers online from a bunch of breweries here in California, (the only good thing to come out of the pandemic), but even then the shipping costs make it a once in a while thing for me.

Enjoy and appreciate your good fortune.

 

My concern would be knowing whether it had been stored like that the entire time. If so, then I'd probably grab some for nostalgia sake, recognizing it wouldnt be super popping and a bit muted. But I've seen one of my favorite spots put old brews into the coolers to move them. Granted it's a college town and some customers may not care as much. But 6 month old beer in a cooler, which spent previous 5 months at room temperature, is no bueno por mi.

 

Yeah man, if anything saddens me at the beer stores these days it's the prices. I have a hard time believing that $7+ pint cans of beer is a sustainable model at all.