How do you educate people about hops?

Rasputin will hold up for a long time. The 90 Minute might be on it's way out. As long as you explained it in a polite manner, there's no problem with your gripe. When beer gets close to date or is at date at my store, I close it out, usually under cost just to get rid of it.

 

I carry a couple of graphs around with me at all times: One shows hop degradation over time and the other shows the correlation of a persons ignorance of hop fade to my personal level of frustration. Usually by the time I have explained the graphs to them the store is dark and no one is around, so I chalk up a win for myself.

 

i would say it is not worth the effort, especially if there are way too many beer spots around your area.

 

This is why I drink Belgians so much now, they are good for at least 2 years!

Regardless, I don't "educate" people about anything unless they are looking for recommendations. All of the stores I visit are "BA Certified" and I am cool with the owners and clerks lol . If they don't keep fresh product, they aren't worth your time so forget about it. Ignorance exists.

 

This is why I drink Belgians so much now, they are good for at least 2 years!

Its cute when Unibroue and some Belgian beers put best by dates on their beers. I recently drank a couple that were 1-2 years past their "best by" date and they were delicious.

 

I made a similar Youtube video. I run around with my iPad and show it to random shoppers at the local liquor stores.

 

I can only imagine the look of horror on peoples faces as they shield their childrens eyes....

 

It sucks, but retailers want to sell the beer, no matter how old it is.

 

I find being polite to people (even who don't agree with you) helps a bit.

Not saying you reacted harshly

 

Well then, you should probably find it.

No beer, or beer vendor for that matter, is worth losing your shit over, especially if you weren't planning on buying any in the first place. Just because an IPA is old and hasn't sold yet doesn't mean I should see the pulsing vein in your forehead.

 

If retailers would just keep their hoppy beers in coolers, life would be much better. But 6 months is still kind of screwy. I think this is one of those battles that isn't going to be won. I guess it's best just to buy your IPAs et al. at stores you know and trust.

 

Many breweries have a general time limit for their beers across the board. Not saying they are accurate by any means. For instance, Great Lakes has a 90-day limit on all of their brews. I know that many will have tired to some point in that period, but Ed Fitz and Blackout will both hold up longer than that. The latter holding up much longer. I can definitely see the frustration with a store still charging full price for six month-old IPA. However, when a beer like that is sitting on the shelf for that long, the distributor of that beer should give some sort of credit for it so they can blow it out, replace it with fresh product, or simply take it back at original cost. Most of the distributors in my area are pretty good about that. It might not hurt to contact the distributor that handles the beer, or if that doesn't help, contact the brewery.

 

I feel your frustration. I purposely kept a 90 in my fridge for over a year and as much as I love my hops, I was pleasantly surprised by the nuances after a year, not hoppy by any means, but then again, this isn't a really hop forward beer. I wouldn't pursue the issue with a discount and just move on to something else.

 

You'll want to have your discussion with the brewery. They give that beer a shelf life of a year. While its true that the bitterness from the hops is gone by 7 months or so, there's still lots of other hop flavors in there playing around the strong malt backbone as it comes to dominate the beer. And, there actually are people who like that beer with a bit of age on it.

 

How would you feel if some random person walked in off the street, came in to where you've worked for 20 years, and started telling you how to run your business? Would you take kindly to that?

 

I think it is a noble idea to try to educate, but given the level of ignorance about beer in general it is likely that 24 hour days and 77 years avg. life span will be woefully inadequate.

 

Well she was right that it's still "good" but that's not really the point. I look at this way as along as we as consumers are educated to check dates, eventually that beer sitting on their balance sheet as inventory will affect their bottom line. At that point, they'll change their tune. If they notice of course, or if craft beer even makes a decent enough margin for them to care.