I stop by a local shop that often (every week) has discounted 6-packs & cases near the checkout. Three weeks ago, I picked up a Great Lakes variety pack. The expiration date on the box was still a few weeks away. When I opened it, the bottles had dates even further in the future. But out of 4 beers, only Eliot Ness (amber lager) tasted relatively fresh. 2 others (Edmund Fitz & Burning River) tasted awful. Skunked, oxidized, undrinkable IMO. Dortmunder was alright, about what I expected from a nearly expired lager- definitely still drinkable. The whole pack was $6.99, so I didn't feel too bad about the wasted bottles. The next week, it was an Alaskan variety pack. Again, the expiration date was about to pass. I picked it up, mostly because I still haven't tried Hopothermia. The Amber Ale was incredibly skunked. Ironically, the Hopothermia tasted great. A little old, but I enjoyed it. The APA was clearly past it's prime and the Belgian was just alright. Again, $6.99. This week it was a slew of Ale Asylum cases- Bedlam, Hopalicious, and Contorter. The Bedlam still has a week to go before "best by" passes. It is clearly dominated by Belgian flavors as most of they yeast has fallen out. A touch oxidized and a touch skunked. But drinkable (barely). Hopalicious, which still has 2 months until the "best by" date, smells and tastes like chapstick. Each 6 pack was $3.99. So while these beers appear to be a "great deal" the shop (which I frequent) is clearly doing something strange- either buying bulk of nearly expired beers (do distributors offer "returned" beers to shops at a discount?) or storing them in horrible conditions until they need more space in the warehouse. Or maybe this is just a great example of how delicate beer actually is. And a warning that you get what you pay for.
A shop by me gas cans of Ten Fidy canned 10/2012. But I'm wondering if this isn't such a bad thing considering the type of beer and alcohol percentage. I may go pick up a 4 pack since I'm a big fan...
Yeah, always tough to tell. I guess I'm usually so obsessed with making sure the beer I'm buying is fresh that it has trained my palate to detect old beers pretty quickly. Only spent $15 on 24, so I can't complain, but I'll still struggle a bit swallowing them down.
Distributors offer major discounts to stores of beer that is about to be at date, or is already past date. Most of the time when you see it priced at 6.99 a 12pack or 3.99 a 6 pack, the store paid around $12 a case (the standard price usually) (I used to work at Ottos and this is what we did) Now with the Ale Asylum. That could be because of date, or because of the Beer Capital losing their distribution.
I see. I suspected that the shop wasn't at fault for the beer being oxidized or skunked (which I attribute to both age and storage conditions). Everything I've bought from Otto's "fresh" or off of their regular shelves has been fine quality-wise. So it was odd to find these heaps of cases that just didn't taste right. Only ones that were still good were the canned Torpedos they had a while back.
I understand your concerns though. Anything that is out of date that the store already had in inventory is picked up by the distributor, not sold at discounts unless its bombers. Usually would get a pallet or two of those discount cases to sell by that pole in the store or by the counter.
I'm glad I bought a few, even if it served to teach me a lesson. So that beer was most likely sold to another shop, picked up by the distributor when it didn't sell, and re-sold to Otto's before finally ending up in my fridge. So I'd have to worry about not only the distributor's storage conditions, but the truck rides it took, the first shop it sat at, and then finally Otto's. I appreciate being able to buy craft beer at a discount, but most of it has tasted horrible. That being said, Hopalicious isn't exactly a world-class IPA, so maybe it's not as skunked as I thought it tasted.
Oh, no. I believe that the beer wasn't sold at all, just finally ends up at Ottos. Sometimes the distributors buy too much beer and couldnt get rid of it. Instead of taking a loss or having to ship it back or whatever they do, they just sell it discounted to the stores to move it out of the system as fast as possible.
^ you betcha, they have some good stuff sometimes. Just to clarify the Ten Fidy wasn't discounted thought I'd mention that since it's the title of this thread.
