California Beers and Freshness

I think it's the blend of hops and the high IBU that perhaps lends itself to longevity - I've noticed this as well with the more "piney" IPAs, recently I had a Smuttynose Finestkind past its best before date (should have checked the BB, oh well next time) and the hop flavours really dropped off quite a lot.

 

The more tropical IPAs like Jai Alai or Tropicalia go south fast after 30 days but a Sculpin or Torpedo 120 days old are still decent. May be due to style differences.

 

Could be you just don't have a sensitive enough palate to the fading of hops. That's not meant to be anything negative, some people are just more sensitive to hop fade and the subsequent maltiness that kinda creeps in with age. I don't find Ca beers to hold up any better than other regions, those style of IPAs are being brewed everywhere. To me old is old, and once the maltiness creeps in I can't drink it. Some guys like IPAs 6 months old, it's not right or wrong just personal preference.

 

It's hard to find fresh Lagunitas here in Michigan. That may be why I have never found one that I really liked.

 

It's hard to get many Ca beers here fresh unless it's a special release. Knee Deep makes good beers I've traded for them in the past, now they sit on the shelf forever, they're just part of the staggering number of IPAs sitting and dying on the shelves.

 

I think production techniques come into play as well. An unpasteurized, unfiltered beer designed to capture subtle essences is great for point of origin sales or local consumption. If, like Sierra Nevada Toronado, your product will travel distances in hot trucks, be stored in hot warehouses then placed warm on store shelves then that has to be taken into account when deciding how to make it durable for the consumers.

 

I'd have thought most of your Sierra Nevada beers would be pretty fresh.

 

That is contrary to Ken Grossman's claims in his book:

 

They are, but regular lineup beers like Scilpin, Ballast Point, Lagunitas , Knee Deep as examples that sit forever. Some are over 8 months old, some more. They're just low turnover beers.

 

I haven't had much luck with Port Brewing beers here it the east either except when found on tap.

 

Yeah, I've given up on them unless it's on tap in a place where I know they go through a lot of beer.

 

Mr. Grossman writes of laudable goals but that ain't what's happening. SN may well have kept to those standards when they delivered beer themselves but to say they require distributors around the Country to maintain refrigerated premises is nonsense. Neither Sierra Nevada nor any other brewery has any control over the product once it passes out of their hands.

Our Southern Climate is hot and the local distributors are not going to undergo the expense of keeping their warehouse cold unless they can recoup that cost somehow. The Sierra Nevada Torpedo I have on hand was bottled 2-11-16, shipped to our local distributor in an unairconditioned truck, stored in an unairconditioned warehouse, trucked warm to my local, sold warm (well, cool the touch actually, room temperature) and during the period from origin to my hands didn't see a refrigerator until I got it home.

It drinks fine by me but had it been six months old I wouldn't have bought it.

 

So basically it's not CA beers, just some. :-)

 

Gee, I've never been inside a delivery truck making deliverys or inside a distributor's warehouse to tell whether they were chilled or not. How did you get them to let you see? Some of the folks I've talked to here won't let anyone not employed by the company in either one. (Liability issues I guess?)

 

Well to use the word all would be kind of wrong, all is like always is a pretty powerful word in and by itself. Stone Enjoy Bys are obviously fresh, and SN is brewed here in NC, so they're not really Ca beers to us. But the local IPAs are getting so much better a lot of guys are reaching for them, if I'm a retailer I would slow down on out of state beers that I can't sell. Bestway probably has 50 IPAs or so on the shelf, a glut of riches right there. Funny Oskar Blues is brewed in state too, and I have a hard time finding Gordon's under 8 months old, Dales not so much old, but I can get It at my Dads in Pa 15 days old. Go figure.

 

Social acquaintances of course but I have no interest in wandering around someone's place of business. I have actually declined an offer to visit because the thought of seeing cases of beer stacked up in a hot warehouse is a bit depressing.

My sources for the conditions I described are the distributors themselves, their staff, reps, salesmen and truck drivers.

Funny story, I was standing in the beer isle holding a bottle of Lagunitas up to the light to read the bottling code when a rep waked up with a new guy in tow. Turning to the new guy he said, "Now if you have any questions about beer you ask this gentleman right here".

 

A refrigerated truck will have a large refrigeration unit on the outside, most usually on the front of the box. Also, if you see a delivery truck with the doors open, look inside. Is the floor wood, or a channeled metal? Because of condensation, reefer trucks have metal floors that allow the collected water to drain. A wood floor would rot from the water. FWIW, I am yet to see a reefer delivery truck in my area, and most of the OTR semis rolling into the local distributors are dry boxes too.

https://reservations.ryder.com/~/media/reservation/images/vehicleimages/lightduty refrigerated truck/refrigerated_straight_truck_sam_70_110.as

http://www.ameriquestcorp.com/images/content/small-banner-used-truck-reefer-trailer.jpg

 

Dry box trucks, never heard that, good information, thanks.

 

Freshness could more likely be correlated to the size of the brewery than location. [In general] Larger breweries have superior packaging equipment. Say you were to take a beer canned on a mobile canning line at a small brewery, and a similar style of canned beer from Sierra Nevada. Identical storage conditions would show that there is a dramatic difference. I've had SNPA at 4 months and it's still a great beer. A local APA in a can is likely to be quite undesirable at that age. That's why when the Can vs Bottle argument comes up, the answer is actually "it depends"

California beers will not have any superior "staying power". In fact, Sculpin, for example, ages quite poorly in comparison to similar examples in the style. Additionally, living on the east coast, I would argue the opposite of what you proposed. Longer travel times can have negative effects on beer.