Regarding "Freshness"

Jim, I do not know what your recent experiences have been but for me the "or not" is the case. Just lots of old beer sitting around and it has been this way for quite some time. Unless the Wholesale Distributors are willing to remove old stock and compensate the retailers (e.g., Retail Beer Distributors) I do not envision things getting better here.

I recognize the qualifier of "well, most of them anyway" but breweries are indeed part of the problem IMO. They are the ones producing the products (over producing?) so they could help with freshness by not producing more product (or sending to certain Wholesale Distributors) until the majority of existing products in an area have already sold. In the three tier supply chain (Brewery -> Wholesale Distributor -> Retailer) all three business entities have a role to play if solving the issue of too much old beer on retailers' shelves is a priority.

Cheers!

 

Dale, I think I have a ‘solution’ here – you need an eyeglass strap!

 

Agreed. I've seen tons of old beer out there and the retailer doesn't seem to care. Part of that may be that they're unaware, and part of it is that they cannot always send beer back. Maybe I should say "usually" cannot send beer back. Those agreements vary, and can go back to the brewer. Some brewers will take the beer back without any questions asked, and others will absolutely not. Some distributors will take the beer back regardless. Some retailers will dispose of it themselves. There are no rules; and you're correct, some brewers are the problem, which brings me to...

It takes a lot of work to figure out your market and where your beer is selling and how quickly. Also, you have to look at things like distributors giving retailers discounts for buying larger quantities and so forth. Most smaller breweries don't have the staff to handle these things, and the same is true for a lot of distributors.

We can only hope that things get better.

 

I can provide my personal experiences shopping at my 'local' Total Wine & More (in my neighboring state of Delaware). I mostly go there to buy wine & spirits but I will construct a list of beers to buy if I can find it fresh. I have on some shopping lists had up to 10 beer brands (knowing in advance I would likely only purchase a couple of those beers). On one trip I came home with no beer whatsoever since all of the beers I had on my list were 'old'. I call it the Total Wine & More workout: I lift the beers off the shelf and I put them back on the shelf.

Cheers!

 

Are you looking at singles or packs? I know most stores when they place out single beers tend to place the old ones out. My TW is a prime example. I can go and look at singles and see one date then go over to the packs and see fresher dates. What I end up doing is just taking the single from the pack. My grocery does this also, the dreaded mix 6 section (or what I call the land of the dead) is usually all the old stock. Again, I just snag the fresh beer of same make for my mix and go. My take is why should I buy 3 mos old beer when the same beer is 2 feet over and is 6 weeks old.
Cheers

 

And I am of the opinion this situation can be compounded by the breweries giving discounts to the Wholesale Distributor for bulk buys. In my opinion this whole discounting thing is a large part of the 'old' beer problem:

• The brewery wants to sell more beer to a given Wholesale Distributor(s) so they incentivize them with a discount if they buy x pallets of beer.
• The Wholesale Distributor now has 'too many' pallets of beer in their warehouse so they offer discounts to the retailers to bring down their oversized inventory.
• The Retailers now have more product than they can sell in a short timeframe

The net result is too much 'old' beer on retailers' shelves. To add 'insult to injury' we Pennsylvania end customers do not see any of this discount effect since our retailers do not run promotional sales (at lease my retailers don't).

This whole situation just stinks!!

 

6-packs. I do not even look at the singles since they are consistently too old. I do find 'fresh' 6-packs at my 'local' Total Wine & More most of the time. Like I stated above on my list of 10 brands I typically come home with 2 of those beers; the other 8 are too old for me to purchase.

Cheers!

 

Might be completly non related but my ex girlfriend lives in Harlem and I was shocked when I walked into her local supermarket and they had an impressive beer selection for the neighborhood... When I looked at the dates on the riverhorse, bear republic, harpoon etc they were all outdated... At the time I was living with her and wanted to try these beers fresh so I advise the manager that all his craft beer was outdated... A week later I found everything still on the shelf at half the price.. When I spoke to him again about it he said its just beer it doesn't go bad,and that his distributor refused to to pick it up because they werent full cases of beer.. These were from multi distributors refusing to pick up outdated beer.. I mean Sam adams summer ale in February. Stone ipa outdated by 7 months.. I never cared about bottle dates until now. So yeah fresh is better

 

Agree, I mostly pass on singles also just because its too much work to sift thru them. Was just curious as to your experience. My TW is notorious for placing out the old crap in the single area and then an isle over you have the identical beer fresh. Sadly it spoils new beer drinkers because then tend to do the mix pack to get a sample and end up thinking those brands/styles suck and never buy again. If I was a brewery I would be concerned about this. How many potential customers do they lose? I bet it s a lot.
Cheers

 

Only addressing the major regional breweries:

West Coast IPAs & lagers - Try to purchase within 2 months of canning/bottling, but I've had 6+ months old bottles of my favorites and they were all still great.

NEIPAs - Probably within 6 weeks, it's not like these are that aromatic or special anyways.

Belgians, stouts, porters, wild/sours - I might grab the oldest one available depending on the situation.

 

With NEIPA, at least from breweries I drink regularly like Other Half, I've found that they're fine up to at least 12 weeks, but those are beers that I buy from the brewery less than a week after canning and sit in my fridge from that point on.

But if I'm picking something out from a bottle shop, I'm much pickier about my dates. I've had too many "shelfie" NEIPA that were faded and dominated by a maltiness that isn't supposed to be present in the style.

 

I won't consider purchasing beer that is 3 to 4 months old because I don't have to. The shelves are extremely crowded in Pennsylvania and I have plenty of seasonal, local, or just plain fresher options. There are plenty of ipas that I enjoy, I just shop for the freshest one. I wonder how long it'll be before we don't have as many choices? I believe that the market is currently oversaturated and we are due for a contraction.

 

I have been wondering the same thing for several years now. When I was recently in my local Retail Beer Distributor I asked the owner: "How do you decide which beer brands to carry?" His reply was: "I just carry them all".

The 'challenge' of the PA Beer Distributors (or at least the ones near me) is that they are HUGE so they have the floor space to carry a crazy amount of differing brands. Should they do so? It would seem that they are responding to the beer consumers which demand an extremely large amount of choice. Lately I have wondered is this is the 'optimum' solution because if the net result is a significant portion of the beer is 'old' then is there really a choice a here? My answer would be no to this question.

Cheers!

 

I agree with the above as a general guideline.

I do not agree with the “too fresh” idea. I’ve had a few NEIPAs that were less than a week old and tried the same beer (same canned on date) two weeks or more later and did not notice a difference.

 

I believe it really depends on the individual beer and consumer. If you are buying IPA’s then the hops are the dominating factor, likewise with the coffee in coffee infused beers. The brewers usually tell us to consume as fresh as possible as the science that they have imparted as research into their product says these flavors fall off over time.

Now, not everyone of us is a ‘super taster’ with 30+ papilla so perception will very from person to person. I would not personally purchase a 6 pack of IPA’s that’s three months old because I like a quality rotation to choose from and might not get to the last couple for 2-3 months after purchasing. Some individual NEIPA’s at four months I’ve found to be more enjoyable than another company’s at one month old.

Living in Montana I understand how we are victim to the local distributors and the selections they acquire and how fast they move the beer out of their warehouses. But this is their job and there is science behind it so it should be on the top of their list just like the rest of the food staples you purchase from the grocery store.

Do I dump out old beer? No. But I have beer known to load up a couple mix sixers of stuff I haven’t gotten to in a timely fashion and gift to friends at work that don’t care about freshness, can’t afford or don’t desire to drink the way I do, and who appreciate free beer.

 

I know it is not what industry guys want to hear, but... if your company has a beer on the shelf that is two months old or older, and there is another beer on the shelf I like equally that is one week old, so sorry, I buy the one week old one.

I prefer any age that a beer puts on be done in my fridge at home. I do not feel badly that I didn't buy that two month old beer, because I am paying more than triple the price I would pay for an AAL, and for that money I want exactly what I want, and sorry about that, don't really care if anyone is upset by it, or whatever the thoughts about me are when I don't buy that beer that the brewer/distributor thinks is perfectly good, because I found another one that is perfectly better.

It sucks for me I have to pay so much for the beer I love. It sucks for the brewery/distributor that I didn't buy that two month old beer because I found a one week old beer I like just as well.

 

Beer shelf life is attributed to a number of factors definitely with regards to ingredients in the beer, how much hops are present, any dry hopping, etc.. The typical 90 - 120 day limit is "dry shelf" dating mainly because of the average rate of degradation on a retail shelf thats not typically refrigerated. Now if you keep that same beer in a properly refrigerated space like we do at the my store you can in fact extend the fresh shelf life of that beer as you've slowed the degradation down, that 90 - 120 day limitation is extendable to a reasonable amount of time beyond that. Say a couple more months to be honest. I personally pull beer from the shelves and taste to see if they are reasonably fresh and even cut the price in half instead of simply dumping it. I get credits where applicable but a lot of time the beer is still very good. No complaints and a lot of return customers looking for the post peak deals. Even some of the most ardent of "fresh checkers" admitted to me that they couldn't tell it was past its date. Fact is, stores should be honest with their customers and their stock, if its a bit past its date but its been properly stored, just mark it down and let them know whats up. never charge full price for past peak product whether its good or not.