Hey guys. Just visited Denver/Longmont/Estes Park. While I'm used to getting shitty can dates on their stuff in Chicago, and haven't bought their stuff in while because of it. I was shocked to see it was impossible to get IPA, or Dale's less than 6 weeks old and we checked everywhere we came across. In some places IPA was on clearance or they didn't even have it. Did OB phase this out? Are they just simply notorious for terrible dates? Or is it even a Colorado thing, I saw a lot of longer dated stuff than I'd expect.
There are a lot of old IPAs cluttering Colorado shelf space these days. I'm surprised you found something that fresh TBH.
For a lot of beer yes. But for tropical flavor hop showcase beers like OB IPA, I'll vehemently disagree. Try this beer at a week old vs 6 you'll taste a dramatic difference. This, Pliny, Beer Hates Astronauts, Anything that's focusing on fruit forward flavors coming from hops. I've personally done a test on Pliny from bottling to 5 weeks out every 3-4 days. After 1 month it's not the same beer. There's a reason Stone makes "Enjoy By".
Comparing OB IPA to Pliny is laughable. OB IPA is mediocre start to finish. Not sure what you were hoping for. IPA was phased out many places over the state because it's not good and didn't sell well at all. I run one of the largest volume spots for OB in the United States and even I can't get anything but Dale's or Pinner fresh to your standards.
A lot of useful information. I wasn't putting IPA in the same league, I was just saying the hops fall off very similarly. Honestly I haven't touched OB stuff in probably 2 years. We drank a bunch of IPA when it first came out. Then the dates started getting long and we stopped, there's much better uses of my money and liver. IPA is and to a lesser extent Pinner are the only ones that the dates matter to me. Bright, fruity tropical flavor hops. Dale's is a juggernaut of a beer and go months and be fine. I put in the same category as Serra Nevada Pale, if it's less than a year, its fine. Along those lines, is it a supply issue in Colorado? Is this a problem unique to OB or is it CO in general? Coming from Chicago, the consumer is very concerned with freshness on IPAs.
Pinner is great fresh! Not a supply issue but rather bulk. In order to get the right pricing to be competitive (especially where we are located) it is quite the quantity order across 12pks and 6pks to achieve the volume discount pricing. That inventory doesn't disappear in a week but more like 3-4.
That's awesome information. Thanks so much. Has order quantity and pricing been more challenging with the mass migration to cans?
