Does cold storage for IPAs figure into where you shop?

It is beneficial for ALL beer to be stored cold, not just hoppy beers or IPA's.

---Ken Grossman, Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., Beyond the Pale (2013)​

I don't know - I don't want to drink stale pale ales, brown ales, porters or pilsners, either.

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Judging by the sheer number of hop forward beers that most stores carry, there's no way they have the capacity to keep all of them cold. I also doubt most distributors keep their beer cold and they probably aren't shipped cold most of the time either. It seems almost pointless to worry about them being cold just at the last stop along the way to your house.

 

I buy at the brewery much as possible, and they go from brewer's fridge, into my cooler, and into my fridge when I get home. Yes, freshness is key to my enjoyment of most beers, and especially IPA styles. At the bev store I go by date, and always buy the best beer at the freshest date in the fridge if possible, but if fresh enough on shelf is okay too. No date on packaging? Doesn't come home with me.

 

I would tend to agree with this^.

Seems like most stores I go to have stuff in a fridge but the beer is stored at room temp in the back of the store and gets moved to the fridge when the shelf gets low/empty. It's likely those beers haven't been stored cold for very long, unless it's a beer that doesn't sell, in which case, it's old and I wouldn't buy it anyway.

 

My main focus is freshness over cold storage as far as IPAs are concerned. Of course I get them cold ASAP, but I don't worry as much about whether or not it is at a store. I agree with Dave that if it's fresh and on a shelf that's fine as well as if something doesn't have a date then it's not coming home with me.

 

It's why I buy from a small shop like Bestway over Total Wine for any and all hoppy beers except obviously freshly delivered special releases. They keep it cold from the delivery truck on a lot of their beers, obvious fast moving beers might be stacked on pallets, but that's fairly minimal.

 

Would a grocery store ever keep dairy products in warm backrooms and on warm shelves because "with all the variety available there is no way they can afford the capacity to keep all of them cold"?

As far as I'm concerned, any store that keeps rows and rows of warm beer on the shelf is just taking a shortcut in order to have more quantity or variety. (Looking at you, Total Wine.) I have no idea what the backroom of the liquor stores I frequent are like, but I know France 44 has a large walk-in cooler, and my "convenient on the way home" store has probably 90% of the beer on display in coolers, with the larger coolers being the convenience-store type with cold storage behind the display shelves.

 

If I had the option, it would. Unfortunately, only one place has a cold room and it's about 12 x 12 so their stock is limited.

 

Lots of places have too much beer in stock to chill it all, not just the big places.

Most beer stores in PA are simply large warehouse-style establishments with pallets and large shelf units for storage and at best a few cold cases. So the presence or absence of cold cases doesn't impact where I shop.

It does, however, impact my choices of what to buy and how carefully I check date codes. For example, in the summer I'm much more picky about which bottling dates and/or best by dates I'll allow for a purchase than I am in the winter, even when it comes out of a cold case. I'm also much more likely to buy only recent seasonal releases in the summer. Similarly, cold cases don't guarantee freshness as I've found lots of out of code bottles stored in cold cases.

 

Yes it definitely factors in. Date is a bigger deal for me but I'll buy a slightly older beer if it's likely been stored cold longer.

 

Comparing apples and oranges here. Dairy can go bad and make you sick. Beer might not taste as good, but it should not make you sick if it has been sitting on shelves.

 

Storage cold is not so much a controlling factor in where I shop because there are not many store choices available to me, but when I go to my stores I'll certainly look in the coolers first for the beer that I want before selecting from the non-cooled shelf.

 

The grocery store I work at has the cooler space dictated by demand, rather than by style. This unfortunately means that the 12 feet of Pale/IPA shelving I have can't go into the cooler shelves. I've done what I can to mitigate this by making all the IPAs face the open coolers, so while they aren't full-on cold, they can still get down to cellar temp. While I'd love to give all my craft beers a spot on the coolers, the store doesn't have the budget to buy me four 16 foot units, so we have to make do.

To answer the question, if I'm in another store, no, it doesn't figure in for me, at least negatively. I'd be very impressed if I saw a store that had all their beer in a cooler, though.

 

For rotating releases that are days on the shelf no matter where I go, no, it doesn't matter. Same for regular releases that are like a week old in the bottle. Refrigeration just doesn't matter much in these cases.

For stuff that might be a few weeks or a month old, then I prefer refrigerated source.

 

I realize that. The point was it is an economic decision rather than a decision based on keeping best quality product for their customers.

 

Only one of our 7 distributors doesn't store their beer cold at their warehouse. Several of the distributors use refrigerated trucks (as required in their contracts by the breweries)

Our store is tiny and we keep all hoppy beer cold all the time. I wish we could do it with all of our beer (except for some Belgians). It can definitely be done if the store cares.

https://www.facebook.com/BeertopiaOmaha

 

It definitely does. It's more superstition than anything. If the bottle date is really fresh then it doesn't matter.

 

For me, cold storage mostly comes into play when I know that I want to crack open one of my purchases as soon as I get home. From a quality-control standpoint, it's more of a non-factor - I think like most of us, I tend to focus more on the bottling dates.

 

Stop by an actual distributor or wholesaler some time. They are usually just a warehouse with shelves. Pretty unusual for the entire place to be cooled. They may have a smaller cooler area where they keep some stuff but it won't be their full stock. So how it's stored at the retail level isn't going to make that huge of a difference.

Also I doubt a grocery store is stocking over 100 different kids of milk like they probably are for beer in any place but the smallest stores. It's just not something that is viewed as perishable at room temp by most retailers.

I'm in PA so the terms distributor and wholesaler may mean different things where you live.