a store owners interesting thoughts about ipas

Good stuff (as always), Jesskidden. I think maybe our ancestors might be laughing at us for prizing the smell and taste of wood in our beers.

 

Or imagine how long you'd still have a job if you told your boss, the local beer baron, that you bought used barrels and was aging his prized ales or lagers in them and his beers now would taste of whiskey or wine...

 

No myth...this happened here as well...I should know: I was the one my distributor told this to when I tried to order Celebration right when it came out...

 

It's the distributor's contractual responsibility to the brewery.

Any good retailer should "monitor" their own stock, of course.

Here's an example from a 1980's era contract between Anhueser-Busch and one of their wholesalers:

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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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If it's not the industry standard, it sure should be.

 

ISO beer that tastes slightly of pitch. Mmmm.

The source I read, IIRC, said many of those long ago English beers tasted more strongly of pitch than "exceedingly faint". Either way, I think modern drinkers wouldn't enjoy it so well.

Our homebrew club is planning a barrel project as part of a community fund raiser. Hopefully we will get a bit of the taste of wood and Zinfandel into our beer. I think we will stick to steam and Star San for cleaning, sanitizing, and preventing infection

 

Totally agree. I, however, just found a Mongo bomber in my beer fridge bottled on 11/16/11. Thought I'd try it anyway while watching the Kansas/UNC game. It was a drain pour. 4 1/2 months was far too old. It really wasn't all that undrinkable...but I'd rather pour it out and drink something better...so I opened a fresh Kern River Just Outstanding.

 

(also directed @ the quote in the post, about not understanding people who won't drink an IPA over a month old)

what i don't understand is the people offended by other people caring about freshness. what's it to you? so-and-so doesn't like beers where the hops have faded significantly--oh no! who does he think HE is!?

 

My guess is that people who like freshness are snobs and are the kind of people ruining our "community" or something.

 

Freshness is not being snobby. I prefer fresh beer, get over it. Being snobby would be saying that, "people who only like fresh beers don't have the highly refined tastes of us people that prefer aged beers." or something like that. Liking fresh milk doesn't make me a milk snob. Liking fresh baked bread doesn't make me a bread snob. Liking fresh fruit doesn't make me a fruit snob. So why does liking fresh beer make me a beer snob?

 

I question most beer geek's ability to recognize and diferentiate stale hop flavors from fresh...

And yes, not everyone is a super taster - or even taster for that matter.

 

@wine taster comment, want to point out the difference between "i taste a grocery list of things in this beer / wine," and what's generally happening.

if you taste beer X, read a review that basically lists all the flavors at an ice cream shop, and think, "i don't taste ANY of those! this guy is just being PRETENTIOUS!" you've probably got the wrong idea. he doesn't taste all those things either. he tastes a lot of stuff suggesting those flavors, and he's trying to get it across with the best flavor descriptors he can.

for consumer review sites especially, this is a helpful thing to do. we're not writing scientific articles here; we don't need the height of precision and rigor. if i get a hint of caramel, or even some particular brand of caramel candy, i'll note it in the review. it's that simple... no pretension, no assertion that i have a better palate than anyone else.

re: IPAs, making a turn here from earlier in the post, if you don't taste the difference between fresh and old IPAs, the problem is with you, not the beer or "snobbish perceptions" (unless it's just a shitty IPA to begin with). notice, this is crucially different than saying "if you like old IPAs better than fresh, there's a problem." you like whatever you like, that's nobody's business. however, the deterioration of hop oils is objective fact, whether you're sensitive to it or not--and you probably are anyway, unless you have some dumb "anti-uppity" mindset that causes you to immediately disagree with people who complain about anything (in which case you're still sensitive to it, but you'll convince yourself you aren't).

 

At least he cares enough to know what his customers want and try to provide them with fresh IPAs...how many stores have you been to that you've seen IPAs that are 4,5,6 months old?

 

I'm with you for the most part, but I can't deny that on multiple occasions I've received 2 of the same IPAs in a trade and drank one right away and the other I brought back to Paris to share. Within a one month span, the beer was far less hoppy.

 

Distributors that hold back on releasing Celebration for any reason are full blown idiots. The fact is Celebration was released to multiple markets well past its bottling date. Dumb business.

 

I just pull them and drink it myself. Keeps the good ones for the customers.