NE IPA Issue

Hey everyone. Quick question for those that have had quite a few TreeHouse, Trillium, and Alchemist beers. I recently purchased some fresh beers from these 3 breweries online, and most of them lived up to the hype and were incredible! But a few were not very good at all or just plain weird/not good. The 3 I had that were not good or weird were a: Alchemist Heady Topper, TreeHouse Alter Ego, and Trillium Congress St. All 3 were just brewed within a week or two of them arriving to me.

The Heady Topper smelled STRONGLY of skunk, and then tasted like a fairly bitter, no flavor, all hop and bitter regular IPA with a skunky flavor as well. HOW? It's in a can and is fresh, and as far as I can tell, beers usually can't skunk unless they were lightstruck, which can't happen as HT is in a can and it was fresh.

Then the TreeHouse Alter Ego was just odd. For the first half of the beer, it had this weird gaseous like carbonation deal going on that smelled funny and masked any flavor? And a strong acidic bitter nasty grapefruit like note, NO other fruits or flavors. My gf even confirmed it on a few sips. Then eventually it mellowed out a bit, and I could tell it had the similar DNA to Julius, but NOTHING like any other TreeHouse or Julius I've had. No super creamy OJ and fruit/citrus flavors and delicious like the Julius. It was just odd and lacked a lot of flavor. Any ideas?

And then the Trillium Congress St was just plain old IPA flavor that was smooth, but lacking in any way shape or form of flavor. No fruit, citrus, or anything. The only flavor I got was an old school IPA type hop and bitterness but with a smooth creamy mouthfeel, that's it. And then the after taste was of PEANUTS! Same thing, the gf and a friend both tried it and couldn't taste any fruit or citrus or anything resembling what it's "supposed" to taste like and also noticed the weird peanut like after taste.

And as I already mentioned, all of these were purchased from a very reputable seller with close to 100% feedback and all were less than 3 weeks old, most were only a few days or a week old, including these 3! Any ideas as to what is going on here. Is this normal or did I get bad beers or what? So confused. And since I don't live in Boston area, I can't go back and just try out some more to see if I just got a bad one.

Thanks

 

There are loads of places online you can buy beer from. * is where I purchased these, but there are plenty of other options. This seller has just about 100% rating and sells TONS of these beers often. He bought the Heady Topper and sent it to me on their most recent batch, and all other cans have dates on them, so I can see that they are fresh. And even if they weren't, they'd still be really good. Just because an IPA is 1-3 weeks old, doesn't mean it still won't taste great. It might loose a little bit, but not much.

So jhavs, you seem to think the beers I had, that tasted weird or bad, aren't normally like that? Which means something is wrong with them. Not sure how though. The date is on the can, and the Trillium and TreeHouse had dates within 2 weeks or less from when they arrived to me. And the Heady Topper was the newest batch. The seller is respectable and I trust them. That's not the issue. So it's all a little weird and confusing. Just mostly wondering if anyone has had any "bad" batches or bad beers of these 3 from those Breweries ever. Thanks

 

Thanks. That's actually helpful. After reading a ton of descriptions of it from TreeHouse and reviews, it seems like it's supposed to be a LOT like Julius, but it was only slightly like it. It wasn't until about 1/3 of the beer was left, and had warmed a bit, that it started to taste good, but still "off". The Julius from the same order along with Super Typhoon, BBBright w/Citra, Doppelganger, Haze, and Green all were incredible! Especially Doppelganger, BBBright with Citra and Super Typhoon! Three of the best IPA's I've ever had in my life!

 

Yeah, I purchased from MBC's since I'll never have the chance to buy directly from the breweries since I don't live anywhere near them. ALL of the beers I've purchased except those 3 have been incredible. So I think it's just a bad batch of those particular beers I work with an RN that did a tour in Boston for about 6 months and visited Trillium, TreeHouse, Alchemist and others in the region often while he was there. He said Trillium was incredible and had LOADS of flavor. He also loved Treehouse and the others, but Trillium was much closer for him. So I'll give Trillium another go. The Congress St was canned 9/12 and I drank it on 10/6, so about 3 weeks old. Should still be 100% delicious at that point. I've had really good hoppy IPA's that were months old and tasted incredible. And they weren't even stored in the fridge. Thanks for your feedback, I appreciate it. Just sounds like I got unlucky on a few

 

Haha, thanks for the help bud! I've never posted on here because I'm on untappd, and don't use this site much because it doesn't have an app. But I was on here today looking at something and saw these forums and figured I'd see if any nice people had some similar experiences that I had with some of these beers being odd or bad. So thanks, you've been a tremendous help

One reason I've usually stayed away from forums is answers like 80% of these are. I guess I shouldn't be surprised anymore in this day and age though. My bad for thinking other humans would want to help out