Bells Expedition Stout bottle freshness

I'd be excited to get last year beers too! Nice find.

 

This is possibly the best beer to age out there. Consider yourself lucky. After 5 years, this beer is magical.

 

check the rest of the sixers and see if they are the same date if so BUY!!

 

Maybe Bell's likes to distribute this beer with a year's age on it. Earlier this year they were selling it at the General Store with a 2011 release date.

 

I have a bottle of this year's batch clearly labeled 7/26/13

 

I actually just found a place nearby that has more than a case of 2012. I'm not sure how much exactly. I'm trying to find a way to justify to my wife another $100 on beer. I know life can be tough sometimes, right.

 

Its a stout no worries about the bottling date.

 

Doubt they are distributing it like that. Stores can hold on to bottles too. There is a store here that still has lots of last years batch.

 

Probably the store that took it off the shelf last year. I ran into the same thing a couple of years ago. Consider yourself lucky - you don't have to age it. I'm drinking the 2010 vintage now and it's great.

 

We still have last year's Expedition sitting around at stores around here. I bought Expedition fresh last year, and lots of it. I just had last year's version last weekend and it was fantastic! Definitely ages very well!

 

This is almost certainly the work of the distributor. I'm guessing they can't move all of their allocation, so they throw old stuff out there when the new stuff is ready to hit, in order to move through some of it. After all, the more Expedition you buy, the more Hopslam you'll get.

 

I would guess this was probably the store's doing. I know you said you talked to the clerk but that sounds like an instinctive response. Just a guess. I just see a store holding on to a few cases they couldn't sell a more likely scenario than a distributer but it could be either. Highly unlikely Bells doing.

 

Whaaa...? When did Bell's start producing Expedition outside of the Sep - Mar window?

 

As I recall, this does tend to get released later in the year, but perhaps they are releasing it sooner this year = more batches??
Purely speculating, but in all seriousness, this is one of the few stouts I buy every year when it is out. The older it gets, the better it gets

 

Passing through Philly in August, I stopped at a store to see if they had any Russian River (they had some bottles of Damnation) and some other stuff not to be found in NY (ended up with a couple Deschutes BB Porters and Obsidian Stouts and some Bell's Kalamazoo and Oberon) and I saw a number of cans of Ten FIDY, which haven't been seen in NY since the early spring. I dunno if they were stored improperly, but after fighting through the first can I had to drain pour the second. Quite upsetting.

 

Is there a point that aging this starts to backfire or stagnate? Is a 12-year old bottle better than a 5-year old?