Craft beer is growing; Why is there so much outdated beer around?

I'd put most of the blame on distributors on this one. Selling too many brands without a proper sales force and we have beer graveyards across the country.

I prefer to hit up a small liquor store that has a tight selection than hit up a beer store that can't keep proper track of their inventory because they have 1000 brands just sitting there rotting.

 

Do you think it could be because more and more people are searching out Whales only, and leaving the easy to obtain stuff behind? It does kinda suck because there are some great beers on the shelves that I would love to pick up fresh such as Odd Sides CPA and Oskar Blues, but Odd Sides doesn't bottle date and Oskar Blues dates are VERY old... Maybe seasonal is the way to go?

 

Yeah, it's a turn over issue at individual stores. I was in a fairly hidden away, high-end grocery store the other day finding beers that wouldn't last a week in a specialty store.

 

It seems that there are quite a few problems associated with the distribution of beer. Actually, it would seem that the majority of complaints people attribute to breweries are probably more likely distributor related.

It's a shame there doesn't seem to be much recourse for distribution related issues.

 

#1 Distribution. If we had a distribution system that was 100% efficient and could deliver the beer people want directly to the people who want it there wouldn't be very much outdated stuff at all. Unfortunately this is impossible in the best of conditions and thanks to a number of reasons (the three tier system not the least of them) we have far from the best conditions. So plenty of beer sits in some places or takes forever to get there, while in others it runs out and leaves them clamoring for more.

#2 Hype. We're getting more and more into a beer culture of gotta have the next great thing, that other thing is old news and I'm not interested any more. People sometimes call it the "wineification of beer," though I hate that comparison.

#3 Date coding. More and more brewers are doing it. Before this, how did you even know if product was outdated? Even if most BA's on this site think they can tell, I'm pretty sure most people can't or don't even know to pay attention to it.

 

Jason hit the nail on the head; this phenomenon is mostly a byproduct of distribution practices.

Across all consumer markets, third-party distributors (the middle men) are not always invested in the success or failure of their retailers selling the product; all they generally care about is getting the product out of their warehouses, off their trucks, and into stores in exchange for a successful transaction.

In the world of craft beer, this means that retailers could wind up stuck with excessive amounts of product that their is no market for.

 

I can only give you the reasons I don't buy most of the beer I see on the shelves.
Personal taste.
I have so much choice, I rarely have to settle for anything except my favorites.
I've been neglecting Two Hearted...which is a fantastic IPA, one of the best. But when I see Jai Alai sitting there, fresh as can be, I'm going to get the Jai Alai.
When I couldn't find Jai Alai, I grabbed a two hearted, didn't look and turned out it was from 4/16. My mistake, I deserve it for not looking, but damned if I didn't check next time they were out of Jai Alai and saw it was 4/16.

So, I got some Storm King instead. I even e-mailed Bell's about the Two Hearted, because I know how good it really is and would like to see it fresh, but it's partly my fault old stuff was on the shelf since I had ignored it for so long when Jai Alai was around.

What I'm trying to say is I pass up a crapload of great beer because my favorites are around. It's a shame really, to see two hearted get old like that, it breaks my one heart.

Some beers are passed up for mediocrity, but it's all opinion in the end so you can't really say that objectively. But what I mean is, I don't consider two hearted mediocre at any length, yet I pass it up frequently. Beers I consider mediocre don't stand a chance when I have so many that I consider fantastic available.

 

Bad distribution practices and a lot of mediocre breweries.

 

I think a lot of blame falls on the store/distributor relationship that involves allocation of special releases based on previous sales volume. In Iowa over the past year or so we have been fortunate enough to pick up quite a few new breweries (stone, founders, green flash, etc.). However, a number of the large grocery stores have appeared to order way more than they can move. For example, one store near me ordered palettes of Founders beers when they came to town, and as recently as a few months ago were still selling almost a year out dated Pale Ale and Centennial IPA. In fact this year, this store was actually selling last year's Curmudgeon and trying to pass it off as the fresh batch. The store did the same thing when stone came to town, and most of their stone products are far past their sell by dates. I confronted the store manager about why they ordered so much and his response was that they had to in order to get special release beers from the distributor.

 

I think we need to look at what creates demand for places to have large selections in the first place instead of carrying a more modest selection.

A major culprit is the "one and done" folks and they are not often repeat buyers of products, nor are they sixpack buyers much of the time (they prefer single bottles to get that tick and move on).

There's just no need to have the more obscure offerings available at many retail shops for the mainstream craft consumer. Places with bottle selections that are too large and can't move a lot of stuff are aiming too much at the wrong consumers.

 

This is a common problem and seems a little shady.

 

Good point. And the demand from who want to try them anyway. There's too much "if it's available, we want it on the shelves" mentality from retailers and from a slice of the consumer base.

 

Oddside CPA does have a date. It's on the label. Sometimes It's not there. I don't buy it unless I can see the date.

 

I think whale hunters are a tiny portion of the craft beer population. They are a small minority even on a site like this.

 

Its even worse when there are franchise laws that make it impossible to expensive to change your distributor.

 

The answers lie not where you think they might in my opinion.
1) consumers have demanded that breweries provide them with a date stamp of some sort. Many breweries have complied.
2) some consumers have decided that they do not believe the brewery's assessment of its own products, establish a freshness date range of their own, and tout this to others as The Truth.
3) those consumers then only take the very freshest off of the shelves, having convinced themselves that there really is a difference in 2 weeks time in the bottle.
4) the consumer then becomes severely bent out of shape when they see certain beers still on shelves after 2-3 months (which is still within the brewery's assessment of freshness), demand that either the store owner or the distributor pull this product off the shelves and absorb the cost of this action into their own business plan. Consumer then refuses to shop at that store anymore, and vocally suggests that others do the same.
5) store owner says fuck it, I have to run a business and there's nothing wrong with this beer at all anyway. I don't need these craft beer extremists and their games.


Short story: To a small extent it can be the fault of the brewery, to a larger extent it may be the distributor. But the majority of these issues stem from the consumer. We have become spoiled and demanding, and some believe that beer is different now than it has been for centuries and has somehow become a more fragile product.

 

“I agree that there are distributors who make retailers buy a bunch of shit to get the whales….”

A BA posted last year about how his local retailer was ‘forced’ to buy something like 60 cases of Goose Island Honkers Ale in order to obtain 2 cases of BCBS. To add ‘insult to injury’ the 60 cases of Honkers Ale were just weeks from their best by dates. That retailer was coerced to buy more of a beer brand that he wanted and he knew that he would have to sell the majority of the beer ‘old’. Wholesale distributors can be rotten!

Cheers!

 

Except that isnt the case. Ive seen plenty of damn fine beers, things that no one would call inferior, that were out of date. Sometimes WAY out of date.

Many people have mentioned, and Ive seen it multiple times, quality German Ofests that are a year out of date. Just one example.