Regarding "Freshness"

Firstly, @BeyondDescription thank you for participating in this discussion. It is always helpful to have beer industry insight.

“My question to you is, when you see a beer in the store (let's say a nice dry hopped IPA), and it's 3-4 months old- do you automatically say no to purchasing it?” My short answer to this question is yes, I automatically say no to purchasing it. My longer answer: Stone Brewing states that their hoppy beers (e.g., Stone IPA) should be consumed within 90 days. Stone is not a tiny, poorly equipped brewery. They have been brewing hoppy beers for decades and they have top notch brewing equipment and top notch brewers. If they state their hoppy beers should be consumed within 90 days that is a valid metric IMO. In addition they produce the Enjoy By beer which has a best by duration of 35 days.

“…major league regional craft breweries could keep all of their product rotating throughout their brewery > distributor > market > your glass in a 1 month span?

In my humble opinion, it's just fucking impossible. It is.”

Yup, the larger, distributing breweries do indeed have a challenge here.

“NOT breweries that you have to drive across the state to wait and line and get a two 6pk limit of a stout brewed with the milk from Victoria Secret models' breasts. Of course you expect that shit to be fresh as a fucking daisy. 1 week MAX. No question sirs and madams.”

Well the above characterization is a bit extreme. With the existing amount of small, local breweries in existence (and more opening everyday) you don’t need to drive far to obtain fresh beer. You can buy it from your local hometown brewery. I have two larger (30 barrel brewhouse) local breweries that I can walk to and come home with cans of freshly brewed beers (e.g., less than 1 week from canning).

“If anything over the years, though, brewer's have been able to hone in on technology which keeps the flavors intact with even the most delicate offerings, even if they have been sitting on the warm shelf under the lights of a grocery store for months on end. From what I have gathered, most shelf-life dates extend up to 6 months.”

The science that you have intimated here is the science of beer staling which is essentially the science of oxidation. Air (oxygen) is the enemy of beer freshness. There are two strategies that mitigate beer going stale (e.g., hop fade in hoppy beers):

· Greatly minimize the amount of oxygen in packaged beer. This can be measured via TPO (Total Packaged Oxygen) and in a high quality brewery (e.g., Stone, Sierra Nevada,…) should in units of ppb (part per billion).

· Continuously store the beer cold (e.g., refrigerated temperatures like 40 °F). Cold temperatures slow down the oxidative processes

“Personally, I think that will be one of the biggest grand slams for the industry. When shelf life can improve so much that you wouldn't be able to tell if it was brewed 1 week ago or 1 year ago. You scientists better get on that shit.”

When you have learned about brewing companies that can consistently obtain TPO values like 1 ppb and have enforceable terms that the Wholesale Distributors and Retailers continuously store beers at refrigerator temperatures please let us know. Maybe then a best by duration of 1 year will be achieved?

Cheers!

 

I sure do, why would I want to drink a 3-4 month old IPA? Like @JackHorzempa mentioned above, Stone has indicated that an IPA should be consumed within 90 days. From my experience the IPA I drink that are fresher taste better than the old ones. The fresh discussion has gone round and round so many times but most would agree when it comes to IPA they need to be consumed fresh, other beers can sit longer etc.
Cheers

Pull up the Video of Mitch Steele and his discussion about IPA and Freshness and when to drink.

Also, I see lots of large brewery beer fresh. I can get Bells, Deschutes, FW, etc. that are usually within 4-6 weeks of age. Stone is always fresh around me also. So its not a matter of just going local, lots of the bigger guys do maintain their beer, maybe some areas and stores don't but most I go to do keep it fresh.

 

Will I buy and ipa that is 3-4 months old? No, there is the odd one due to whatever circumstances that are still good, but generally I stay far away. I understand it’s an industry dilemma, I was looking at some FW beers yesterday the Union Jack was canned in Oct, the Luponic Distortion in Nov. and there’s fresh Burial on the floor that’s two weeks old, it simplifies things.

There’s so much local that’s really good to great here, that I can always get it under a month old. I wonder with guys checking canning dates if some of these big regional and or nationally distributed brewers get knocked backwards a bit. Of the bigger brewers I can usually count on finding a Two Hearted Ale pretty fresh, maybe a month or so. But why would I risk $11-12 on a 4 month old beer? I don’t have to, and when I’m seeing empty shelf space in the cooler I know the retailer is cutting back sharply on beers that don’t sell.

 

Where did you find that? I just went to their website on the topic of "Hops Don't Last Forever" and I copied he below image:



Those are 90 day best by durations for those hoppy beers (Stone IPA, Stone Ripper).

https://www.stonebrewing.com/freshness

Cheers!

 

Please don't be a stranger. As I made mention above it is good to have beer industry folks participating in these discussions.

Cheers!

 

You bolded the "120 days" part while I would have bolded the "less" part.

Cheers!

 

FWIW I think you are correct in your assessment here. That is why I will continue to utilize the 90 day 'cut-off' in my purchasing decisions. Needless to say but I will mostly buy the beer fresher than 90 days since I personally do not drink my beers 'all at once'.

Cheers!

 

I personally want all of my beer fresh with the exception of bigger styles like barleywine and so forth. I try to check dates but that can sometimes be difficult.

When we're talking about American IPA (I don't worry as much with English IPAs), I definitely check the dates. I will certainly agree with @Snowcrash000 that I've had IPAs that were old, 6 months or more, that were fine. Some of them I couldn't compare to what a fresh sample would be like, but other beers I was familiar worth and thought they were fine. To a certain extent it depends on the specific IPA.

Having worked in a distributor before I also understand why some beers can get hung up but that's an entire thread, it's too much to go into here. What I will say is that as shelf space gets tighter and competition expands even more more efforts will need to be made to assure freshness. Or not, that seems to be the American way too, the old who gives a shit, but that will be on the side or the distributors and retailers, not the brewers (well, most of them anyway).

 

I've seen a lot of "Enjoy By" sitting on the shelf well past its date. I guess the retailer doesn't care, or that someone will buy it.

 

From Stone:

• Drink Fresh: enjoy this beer by the date printed on the shoulder of the bottle or on the bottom of the can. The sooner you drink it, the better your experience will be.

So they feel that the sooner you drink the IPA the better your experience, need we say more.

 

My 2 cents:
1) Yes most IPAs are best within 4-6weeks of bottling regardless of style. Some a little longer, some a little less.
2) Regional and local brewers should keep their IPAs in their region. Why go and compete in other saturated markets? Short term gain only when people buy the "new shiny" IPA in their store, then it gets old.
3) Distributors/retailers need to put less quantity of the same IPAs in stores less frequently.
4) Brewers should seriously consider changing flagship IPAs to seasonal releases.
5) Brewers should consider lowering prices of their premium IPAs. Cheaper IPAs with lower ratings tend to move quicker out of stores than more expensive IPAs of higher ratings in stores despite many times being a tastier product.

 

For completeness I should say that every once in a while I do 'luck out' and find fresh hoppy beers from the larger, distributing breweries. In last week's New Beer Sunday thread I discussed Firestone Walker Hazy Mind IPA and that 6-pack of cans were packaged on 2/20/19 so those beers less than a month old. In a recent thread Dale (@nc41) discussed buying Firestone Walker Pivo Pils that was only 6 weeks old.

I am reminded of the old saying: Even a blind pig can find an acorn once in a while.

Cheers!

 

I must be pretty lucky because I can always find these guys fresh. FW, Bells, Deschutes, Stone, SN, Oskar, etc. Most of the time my stores have these guys and they are around 4-6 weeks of age some less some more. I guess we move a lot of beer lol. If I go to 1-2 stores I can always (90% of time) find fresh beer from larger places. Sure there are the old shelf turds also but loads of fresh, and this is not even including all the local breweries with weekly beers coming out that are hours old lol.
Cheers

 

It’s getting much harder though to find that nugget. It bought a Jever yesterday because without my glasses I misdated it, turns out it’s not 2 months old it’s over the best by date. Lol, I’ll try it, but if I had known it was that old it’s a no buy.