Firestone Walker Double Jack Dating Question

black ink on the neck/shoulder of the bottle. look hard, because it is really hard to see sometimes. there is also a chance it could have been rubbed off

 

I know on the single IPA's freshness is important, but is that so with the higher ABV DIPA's? I don't pay as much attention to the dates on the DIPA's and find a lot of them actually improve with a little aging (including Double Jack).

 

Yes. The hops will fade on a DIPA just as they do on single IPA's.

 

Uhh, not likely, unless something has changed recently. The first time I had Double Jack I wasn't impressed at all, then people I trust said that my experience was atypical, so I went looking for another bottle. The freshest I could find were over 4 months old. I found many that were over 6. I think I even asked one time and it had just arrived, 4 months old.

I talked with someone, I don't remember who, who said that Firestone made more than they could sell and so they had perpetual backstock of it, which makes finding fresh stuff impossible. This was about 5-6 months ago, so things could be different now, but I completely gave up on trying to find fresh double jack.

 

Yet it continually gets stellar reviews so the age doesn't seem to be hurting it too much.

 

Looks like about 1/4 are on tap, where that wouldn't matter. Even with bottles, I think there's so much variation in what people want from a DIPA that the maltier ones can take a pretty big age hit and still get good reviews. (Although I'm just going on my recollection that it was one of the maltier ones, that may not be true, for some reason I've never described it in my check-ins on Untappd. My recollection of why I was looking for bottles was also wrong, but that's irrelevant here.)

 

The fact that it had the plastic on it tells me it isn't that old. The just started putting the plastic on this year. I bet it was the bottle days 3/15/12 which is still drinking well, but really fresh it is one the best around......