Fresh IPAs getting harder to find

As a fellow IPA drinker I feel your pain and you've pinpointed a serious problem. Have the same experience here in Atlanta. Only about 5-10% of the IPAs on the shelves have a bottling date more recent than two months ago.

 

IPA's are a hugely saturated market. Seasonal slowdown. etc.

 

Didn't you get the memo. The only way to drink IPA's now is to go to the brewery and have it from a tube strait from the bright tank. As soon as the beer touches a keg, bottle, or can it's too old for me.

 

Beer dates are always going to be an issue the longer the supply chain & in a lot of cases the larger the brewery. Besides checking dates at a store this is reason #1 to try and purchase beer at the source at a local brewery where you should always get the freshest beer. At least in the Chicago area there are quite a few options for local breweries.

 

Don't know where you shop, but I just bought a 4-pack of pipeworks lizard king that was 3 weeks old at whole foods... the Ninja vs Unicorn was only 2 weeks old. I often get half acre and revolution cans with less than a week on them too.

I just flip the cans / bottles looking for dates and buy what is fresh - there is almost always something that just got brewed, and I stop shopping at stores that have old stock.

 

I've noticed that the big name brewers like Stone and Sierra Nevada have good sales in my area so i can usually find those fresh. I wish i can find something like Pinner fresh but whenever i grab IPAs i take anything that is at least not out of date. I did end up with 6 months past Stone Go To amd it was still very tasty. I would guess it depends on your area. I live in an area that has very minimal people but during the summer, the local island is PACKED to the point where locals even have a hard time but those months are the best for beer for me because the most popular beers are the general bud lime, coronas and IPAs.

I dont think a brewery would be able to tell if theyd sell in an area or not right away and it would be sad for the lesser majority of craft drinkers if they pulled their product all together. So i see it as ill take whatever i can get. Id love to constantly drink 60 minute ipa but i just wont if its sat there all year.

 

All regional and widely distributed brewers should just stop with standard year-round IPAs and just go to seasonal release. Have 4 of your best IPA variants and do 4 releases a year. Just my opinion.

Also on some of the OP's comments, I've found that new beer distributed in MD for first time, comes in old and not fresh. As if the distributor was handed back the leftovers from others states stores. Just my observations when Ballast Point, Sweetwater, Terrapin, Bells, Ithica etc started distributing in MD last few years the first batches I got seemed to be old).

 

I think he mentioned some of the local ones you just mentioned are the only ones he can find fresh. I think the issue is finding fresh IPA from other states besides IL/IN in the Chicago area.

 

I've tasted IPA's that were 3+ months old and still tasted very good! Maybe I'm just not that picky.

Anyway, Stone beers are usually the beers that I find older than 4 months. I usually find Lagunitas beers (favorite brewery) very fresh, which I'm happy about.

 

I just found a distributor that sells Sixpoint Resin with very fresh dates.Nobody else seems to notice this treasure so I stock up on it,in case of a snowstorm or extreme thirstiness.I am blessed.

 

And you should choose between those 3-4 beers.

The IPAs that I drink the most of are my homebrewed IPAs; homebrewing guarantees freshness. When I am in the market to purchase commercial IPAs I have a list of preferred beers and I buy the one that is the freshest (and less than 2 months old or so).

As others have posted buying beer directly from the brewery (or brewpub) is also a good option; buy a growler from them. There is no need to suck down the beer directly from a tank inside the brewery.

Cheers!

 

I feel that more breweries are stamping dates that are easily readable without a secret decoder ring. The only old beers I've seen have been at larger stores likes Wegmans and whole foods, which is probably the distributor trying to push off older product

 

Ah yes he did. Thanks.

I guess ipas are always hard with a longer distribution chain. If I can find local great ipas I am pretty happy. I don't need 50 choices just 3 or 4 really good ones

 

Oh wow. Another IPA freshness thread.

 

In an effort to maintain freshness at my brewery, I brew smaller batches than our other beers, but I do so with greater frequency. Not to be "that guy", but I do wish more brewers would do the same thing. That said, I find that IPA's from larger craft breweries do seem to retain freshness better than mine and other smaller breweries do. I think this is mostly due to less oxidation from better bottlers and canners.

 

Sierra Nevada's hoppy offerings hold up very well IMO. Three month old Torpedo or SNPA is usually pretty indistinguishable from fresh. I do agree with the OP though there are way too many IPA's that end up just sitting. I usually have like six or seven beers I will check and then pick the freshest out of them, but sometimes I just want some fresh Lagunitas Maximus or Fresh Squeezed and every six pack is four months old.

 

Most of the out of state IPAs that I find here are old. I was looking to pick up some Union Jack the other day and the ones on the shelf were from August '15. Yea, no thanks. The Odell IPA was 4 months old and I couldn't read the bottle date on the Sucks so I passed that up also. These are all 3 IPAs that I love but basically won't buy anymore because they're always at least 3 months old when they get here.

Thankfully 4 Hands makes my favorite IPA, Resurrected (name change coming), and it's always fresh.

 

Thankfully I live near lots of great breweries pumping out fresh IPA all the time.

My complaint is trying to get fresh IPAs from Japanese breweries. Not that easy.

 

Not really having this problem since I buy most of my IPAs a case at a time and they are either seasonals or they have been ordered through a beer retailer who makes sure I only get fresh beer. If he can't get it fresh he'll let me know and I go for another IPA.