Old IPAs - What to do about this problem?

I disagree. A two-month-old IPA is a shell of its former self, and it most likely doesn't taste the way that the brewer intended for you to enjoy it. Every brewer hopes that their IPA will fly off the shelves, but there are just too many choices now. Thus, great IPAs rot on store shelves. I don't buy any IPA without a clearly discernible date code. My threshold is 40 days. Past that, and IPAs just taste like an oxidized, hoppy mess; IMO.

 

You have to treat this like a whale hunting situation.

Go out of your way to find the fresh examples and buy them up. Make a polite comment to the owner or management about how you appreciate their fresh product and that you'll be back. And I mean buy all that's available if it's in your budget. Why? There is a good chance that the shelf space will be replaced with fresh stuff too (assuming your distributors aren't lame). Repeat.



In my opinion, this is the most realistic way to get what you want. Complaining doesn't get you anywhere at most places. With craft beer being more mainstream these days, there will be people who buy up the stale stuff. I'm not excusing the retailers or distributors here, it's just that they have little incentive given how so many people willingly do in fact buy stale beer all the time.

 

I agree with you. The people who willingly buy the much older stuff are the problem, or I should say a major part of the problem. It removes one of the biggest incentives for retailers and distributors to take the freshness problem seriously.

 

BTW, the snark level on this thread is off the charts. Really childish and unnecessary. The plethora of stale IPAs hanging around on store shelves is a legitimate issue in the craft beer world. What ends up happening is that people who maybe aren't familiar with IPAs are the ones who unknowingly purchase a six-pack of four-month-old Sculpin, Union Jack, etc., and then think it's disgusting. I've seen it happen a million times: I'm at a party, and the gracious host has stocked a cooler full of IPAs that are WAY past their prime. All night, people are drinking these beers and looking at each other wondering why people could possibly like this style of beer so much. It's all I can do to not interject and state that they might enjoy these beers more if they were fresh.

 

It's gotten much better since the first cans of Pivo and Easy Jack were released. Myself and a coworker at my previous job approached the situation very aggressively and for almost three months, now, we've seen fresh releases. Not two weeks, mind you, but nothing would still be on the shelves come a month and a half after canning. I honestly think that it's two entities in our area- Origlio blowing and customers not finding too much appeal in FW products. Remember that we're an IPA city with great IPA brewers. To purchase something we've had a million times almost never occurs, here. The end result is slow moving products that aren't pushed by the distributor or sales rep tend to cause rollover for the new products that arrive (fresher dates). I can't remember if you were an account buyer or not, but when was the last time Origlio or Jenny ACTUALLY approached anybody about fresh Jack coming in next week or old Jack still sitting? Never.

 

Tom, he is referring to Stone Enjoy By.

Cheers!

 

I have the same problem with IPAs at my local. They are rarely fresher than two months. I hate being the guy that reaches back to the 8th row on the shelf to see if that one is any fresher. Spoiler alert: it usually isn't.

 

I am not an account buyer. One of my local beer distributors had a Firestone Walker tasting and I went so that I could have a conversation with Jenny. I spoke to her for about 15 minutes. Overall she is a nice individual but every attempt I made at trying to understand the distribution of Firestone Walker beer in SEPA was met with a combination of dirty looks and replies of abba dabba jabba wabba.

I really do not understand why there is so much old Firestone Walker around but after my discussion with Jenny I simply decided that my beer money will go to other breweries. There is plenty of fresh Victory, Sly Fox, Stoudt’s, etc. beer available for me to buy.

Cheers!

 

The problem does not lie with the brewery, unless of course they self distribute. The problem lies with the store to a certain degree but almost always it is the distributor. So if you have a complaint bring it up with the store owner/manager/worker and they can bring it up with the distributor. Until we start demanding these changes nothing will change.

 

However, we then have to expect a much reduced selection of beer at our favorite stores. It seems everyone wants their store to carry every far-flung brewery that distributes to the area so they constantly can try new things, but having lots of choices means some beer will sit for a while. The only way to ensure fresh beer is available is for the store to order the bare minimum of what they think might sell until the next distro. Tough call for the retailer that wants to be THE beer store in an area.

 

As a retail manager that strives and tries real hard to only stock fresh IPA; It is literally impossible without dealing only with IPA's that self distribute. Rarely, if ever, Do I get an IPA that is less than at least 2-3 weeks old. It gets real frustrating when people comment that an IPA isn't hyper fresh and don't buy it or even worse tell another customer not to if they happen to have it with them.
I make it a point to only order a very small amount of IPA's to make sure I cycle through them as soon as possible but it does nothing more than harm if a customer just leaves it on the shelf because it isn't a week old.

And seriously my fellow New Yorkers, Do you ever expect to see Union Jack or Sculpin fresh as something from Two Roads or Sixpoint or any of the other not-across-country locations? Don't complain to me like I ship the stuff.

 

I find IPAs 6 - 8 weeks old on a regular basis and they still taste fine to me. This includes Union Jack and Sculpin. However, I also see lots of really old IPAs lingering past their dead-by dates on shelves. Last night, I saw an Elysian Space Dust that was bottled in December 2014 just sitting out on a room temp shelf at a local market. Seven months is too old for an IPA. It's a shame, too, as I wanted to try it. Oh, well.

 

I'm not from NY but close enough, so help me understand more how the process works: Why should it always take 3+ weeks for these beers to travel across the country? What all is happening in that time frame?

 

I am extremely fortunate to live in an area that carries self-distributed IPAs such as Golden Road, El Segundo, and Beachwood Brewing. Also, I live about 80-100 miles from Stone, Ballast Point, Alesmith, Modern Times, etc., which affords me access to very fresh IPAs on occasion. I simply check date codes before purchasing an IPA, and I don't buy any hop-forward beer that isn't coded.

 

My response to the OP was "don't buy them", so based on what you wrote I'm guessing we don't disagree there.

No - two month old IPA is not the beer geek ideal. But it's also not a problem either. Like you said - plenty of choices these days. So find something fresher. But if you really must have that FW beer, two months old isn't going to induce the gag reflex (at least it doesn't for me), and personally I think the "shell of its former self" card, when referring to beers that are only 8 or 9 weeks from bottling, is overplayed. A year old IPA = shell of it's former self. Two months = not as fresh as I'd like.

 

I was in a local bottle shop over the weekend, trying to decide which IPA to buy. I picked up a bottle of Two Hearted from a sixer sitting on the shelf (not even in the cooler) and checked the bottled date, Novermber 2014!!!! I ended up buying a sixer of Sweetwater IPA instead...

 

I blame the brewers and distributers for overestimating demand for their beer. My friends in the produce business constantly complain to me on how difficult their supply chain is to manage. It is a huge challenge to deal with a perishable product and I really don't believe that liquor/beer distributors have this sort of expertise. Most of their product does not have a 2 month shelf life to the hard core volume consumers. Brewers / Distributors will either need to adapt to this product category or suffer the backlash from retailers sitting on tons of beer they can't sell.

Seems like FW debuted their cans in Dallas in late March. I happened to be in the Total near my house during the launch Saturday. They had huge displays of the six packs that made an impressive presentation. I bought some Union Jack even though it was already over a month old. It was fine then. But Total still has tons of the same Feb can date last time I was there. And I see the same can date everywhere I see Union Jack in Dallas. It is a real shame because this is a great beer.

On the other hand, I frequently find fresh Sculpin. And a local brewer, Deep Ellum, does a fantastic job managing their production. I rarely see their IPA on store shelves more than a month old. A brewer may be good at making a delicious beer but running the business takes an entirely different skill set.

 

I've also found that a majority of people I've introduced to IPAs usually respond with "I don't know how you drink that crap." So, I would think that these same people would enjoy an outdated IPA more than a fresh one. The hops and bitterness seem to be what chases them away. And I felt the snark was warranted, given the absurdity of the OP's thoughts.

And you wanna see old IPAs? I know a place here that still has Bear Republic, who hasn't distributed to IL in nearly two years. 750-day old Racer 5, anyone?

 

I get that argument but I think, as someone mentioned above, the customers who buy stale beer are equally to blame. I like the idea of comparing it to some other perishable product. Let's say milk. You don't see expired milk sitting on shelves, because nobody would buy that. But there will always be people who buy beer that is several months old.