Breweries selling old beer

No, never been to a brewery selling old/out of date beer to customers. But if Firesone-Walker uses a modern high end bottling line that Double Jack is actually about the equivalent of about a month and a half old that we'd get from most bottling lines. I'd have bought some, especially if it was chilled/refrigerated.

 

The definition of old beer for a brewery and for some people who comment here on Beer Advocate might not be the same.

 

Breweries are also in the business of selling their beer, so it's very likely that they will have allotted themselves what they think they need when they kegged off that run a month back and those kegs are still sitting in the cooler awaiting your mouthhole to consume them. Meanwhile, that beer you really like may have only actually been packaged ONCE in that entire time, so what you are getting there is actually exactly the same thing as what you'll get on market.
While you are content in figuring out a way to complain about this reality. IT is indeed what happens far more often than you would probably like to assume. That beer will also have never been compromised in temperature and only have traveled a few hundred feet in its entire life. Deal with it.

 

Ocean City brew Co comes to mind for this... pallets of the hop forward stuff in front of eastern facing glass windows, 6-8 months old... I grabbed their nut brown (2-3 months old) out of a fridge when i visited. Only thing I felt "safe" about getting.

 

The always fatherly "buyer beware."

 

Trust that that beer will have been stored at its proper temperature and only been moved about as far your eye can see at the facility it was packaged at while you are sitting there at the source of its manufacture next time you decide to mistrust the people who make and package the beer which you are drinking.

 

Last year, I visited Ellicottville in NY and enjoyed the tap beers very much, so I bought six packs of two offerings not on draft. Silly me didn't check the dates (like I usually do) and was horrified to come home and discover that they were both a year old. Needless to say, they were truly terrible tasting and I can't believe they were even available to purchase.

The upside is that I remember it constantly and always check dates now, no matter the source. Once you taste a beer that off-flavored, you never forget it.

 

And there's the problem for the guy selling the beer.

 

Far too few of breweries tend to want to concede defeat. That maybe their beer sorta sucks and no one is buying it? So why are they expanding and brewing more? I've seen so many breweries go that BP route where they want to expand like crazy to the point they may see a great spike maybe ONCE that first year of production. But it's really always been about repeat purchasers. They want to add a million points of sales without really ever looking at established sales.

A lot of breweries may have planned to sell say 10 barrels of a certain release, but get caught up with the excess. No one wants to lose money, so eventually it gets pawned off to unsuspecting customers.. Total Wine is a warehouse for those sorts of actions. Actual breweries selling old stuff is a slippery slope for sure. I have personally not seen that. At the source is actually the best place to be from my experience. The day that changes, I don't know what I'd do. Most breweries are able to ship the old crap to unsuspecting store owners, and hence unsuspecting customers/

 

But both the OP and the guy you responded to are talking about beer at its source, the brewery. So the day is here.

 

You are so far off topic right now that what you are complaining about is actually a completely separate thread.

 

Wait, you're saying Total Wine doesn't brew all the beers on their shelves!?!?!?

 

I trust that you tasted something off at Boneyard, but I can't believe it was due to age without a keg collar or other data besides your palate. They can not keep up with demand, and the tasting room flies through beer, so I'd believe the keg wasn't cleaned properly before I suspected the keg sat around for long enough to taste old. Out in distribution? Maybe, but not at the brewery itself.

 

Based on all the negative comments, I've stayed far away from that place and their beers and been to OCMD/eastern shore at least 5-6 times since they've opened.

 

I'm a huge FW fan but selling old double jack at the brewery and chargin $16 a 4 pack is a double negative. I get the beer-tourism markup thing, but usually the brewery sale is same as store pricing nearby not higher costs. Old beer sold at sight of brewing make zero sense to me at all unless perhaps its old stock returned from stores and the brewery doesn't want to destroy it. I doubt that is the case, but only logical thing I could possible think of.

 

Brewery selling old beer should be unforgivable. We all know the reasons/excuses for old beer on store shelves, but I would never expect brewery to sell old beer.

 

I guess my TW post is more in regards to breweries selling/distributing old beer to begin with. If it's old out the door, is TW really to blame? I don't think I was too far off topic at all. Whether it's a self distributing brewery or going through a distributor, old shit is everywhere. I guess that was my point.

Again maybe going off topic a touch. But one store has the new FBS. 3 wks old upon purchase. TW is probably sitting on some but have mango, devil dancer, and other junk to sell. So when I do get to it there, it may be 7 wks old. Who's to blame? That's not my point here. That happens. But what can happen is breweries dumping old to make beer stores and such look bad.

This is about at the source so it's easy to place blame. I get that. But don't look past them also passing the blame to other places ( maybe such old beer is sold cheaper to TW?).

Just something to think about

 

Local brewery is selling 9 month old holiday IPA for 2 for 1. Gee, thanks guys!

Also selling their 12 month old seasonal pumpkin ale and the new batch as a "vertical". Rated 82 on this website and that's being very generous.