What do you do with beer you don't like?

You may want to reconsider buying beer based on it's rating.....

That aside, here are my suggestions:

1.) Keep it on hand for you when you have guests over. They may love the beer or, they may be just getting into craft and are interested trying new things too.

2.) Cook with it.

3.) Pour it all in the bathtub, hop in, see where it goes from there.

 

Give it away ( if its interesting)! or use as a fruit fly trap(I did this too some yucky day of the dead pale ale last summer).

 

Because I'm cheap I always buy a new brew by individual bottle the first time. Thus I avoid the dilemma of being stuck with beer I don't really care for. This past Christmas I bought individual bottles/cans of winter brew's at Wine World. They have a very nice selection of beers and is the nearest place to my house that a large selection. I loved most of what I picked, with just a couple of exceptions, and I wasn't stuck with a bunch of unwanted beers in my refrigerator.

 

I've yet to buy a beer I couldn't finish, so I don't know how to answer this. I doubt I will ever drain pour any beer (unless it is infected).

Also, does an IPA seriously "go bad" if kept in a fridge for a few weeks or months? Maybe at shelf temperatures in a store, but kept at 35-40 degrees, I really wonder how much a person thinks it tastes different because of the brainwashing here that ipa needs to be drank at wort, otherwise it turns to liquid mucus.

 

Give it away.

 

Just limit the amount of beer you buy? Why even have to consider wasting good (or decent) beer?

 

Drink it.

Or throw it away if its reallllllllyyyyyyyy old AND bad. (Looking at you High Grade rep giving me 2012 Goose Island Christmas Ale in 2013. It wasn't good in 2012 and it especially wasn't good in 2013)

A good beer that's old, eh, I'll give it a shot. Maybe.

 

Just finish a six-pack when you get one!

Don't beer-crastinate good sir. Cheers.

 

Sit on it. Might come in handy later - for you, a guest, as a trade extra, etc.

 

I usually try to drink it, like one each day until it's gone unless it's a drain pour. Then I just get rid of it. I try to get singles if they are available for this very reason. I have slogged through plenty of beer I wasn't crazy about.

 

Stick them in the freezer to preserve the hops, thaw and drink when you're ready.

 

You either don't drink enough, or you buy too much I, too, am always looking for the new, but my budget is such that I don't waste perfectly good (or even okay) beer.

 

Stick it on a busy street corner and make it wear a poster board sign saying what it did wrong.

 

If you gave me an IPA that was out of date when I was just getting into craft I wouldn't have cared. That's just my experience though.

As for picking beers, I just look at the style, the price and the abv. That's all I need know.

 

I try and rotate/drink my "normal" non cellaring beers stock in the fridge so their isn't much old beer in there(drink it anyway) and also clear it out a bit before buying more. I've only thrown out a few beers that I couldn't drink at all.

 

Shotgun it. Easy with cans, but you can do it with a bendy straw in a bottle too.

 

Count me in the "give it to friends" group. If you won't drink it, I'm sure you know someone who will.

 

I regulate my purchasing, especially with the hop bombs because I find <blasphemy alert> I really don't like some of them and many of them sort of taste the same. I will try anything, but whether I like it or not is a different story. So I buy one, if I like it I can get some more and if not c'est la vie there's lots more beer in the world. But I do end up with the random assortment anyway. I actually find it a bit of fun to just randomly pick some leftover off the shelf or find something I have forgotten about.

Also sounds like you might want to stay away from IPA's in general? It seems those are the majority of your stragglers. Most stouts can take a little age by what I have tasted, as can a bunch of other styles. I also agree about the IPA isn't good unless it is fed IV from the brite tank idea. They have more flavor fresh but not to the extent that they can't handle a week or two in the fridge. Sometimes for new people or people not prepared for the hop assault, the lessening of the hop-slap due to a bit of age might be OK.