Fresh IPAs...Does it really matter?

^^^^ Agreed KSOZE. TG has a requirement with ALL stores that carry their bottles that they are refrigerated at all times....that being said....yes fresh is better....best TG beer I have ever had was fresh KING SUE right out of the tap on release day!!!!!

 

It is totally subjective. I've been pondering lately if there is a possibility that an IPA is better with a small amount of age on it. I had Oneida super fresh 4 or 5 times and thought it was great. Last night I had it with a month and a half on it and it seemed to taste significantly better. Probably just in my mind. But the head brewer thinking its best at 2 1/2 months makes me think I could be correct. He would obviously know better than I.

 

The biggest myth is that only IPAs should be consumed fresh/stored under refrigeration, etc., as if it is only hop flavor and aroma that are affected by time and temperature on the shelf, and only those beers that have a huge hop presence need to be fresh for that reason. I also want the freshest pilsners, pale and amber ales and lagers, porters, etc. Yeah, even beers that lend themselves to cellaring - I want fresh. SNPA might have "only" 38 IBUs- but I want to taste all of them. Ditto for Pilsner Urquell's 42 IBUs or SABL's 30.

When I do infrequently buy AAL's, I want them fresh as well (which is why most of time when I do find Straub Beer in eastern PA, I pass on it even though it's the AAL I buy the most). It was not unusual when I started buying beer to find brewers with recommended shelf life periods of 2 or 3 months and even today's ~10 IBUs "macro" brands are given a mere 4 months shelf life by their brewers.

Dalgliesh's famous graph "Sensory changes during beer aging" (here updated by the Brewers Association with lines for "months" added) was created in 1977, long before the current IPA and DIPA craze, back when the hoppiest US beer (probably Ballantine IPA, since Anchor Liberty Ale was not yet regularly brewed or bottled) was around 45 IBU's. Lots of other changes going on other than just those hop-created flavors and characteristics (bitterness).

 

I'd imagine that anyone who is a fan of central European style lagers can attest that freshness definitely isn't just for IPA's.
At the same time, it's not like they aren't lagering those beers for 4-6 weeks before serving them, too.
There's a sweet spot and I feel most styles probably have one. Where that is can vary from person to person and style to style, though.

 

IN my totally anecdotal experience, 60 - 90 days is when I might notice a drop off, but only if the beer is bottled. Cans don't seem to suffer from this. Beyond 90 days to 120, I believe I can tell a difference. Beyond 120, I won't drink them.

 

Some beers, even IPAs age better than others. Evaluating more than one beer would make a better study. The article does not say how the beer was stored. As the author notes, how the beer was hopped and the hop character that the brewer is trying to develop is also important. I think canned beer also fares a little better than bottled.

 

The traditional lagering period for recently fermented lager beer - in bulk tanks at cold temperatures, unfiltered and unpasteurized is very different from the time a filtered/pasteurized bottled/canned/(flash-past.)kegged beer spends in hot shipping containers or at room temperature in distributors' warehouses or a retailer's "warm" shelves and floors.

 

1. Maybe
2. 6 months (but I am not a freshness fanatic). Contradicting my 6 month rule, I believe my favorite, Sucks, kind of falls off a cliff around 100 days. Most around here seem to agree about the Sucks cliff but think it's at 60 days, or, with real freshness ****s, much sooner.

I routinely buy Double Jack on sale at deep discount at my local because it's over 90 days old. This beer is FANTASTIC at 90 days plus, and well into 4 months, so maybe its little brother should be expected to hold up, I don't know. But I wouldn't hesitate to drink a 5/15/15 Double Jack, today.

As to Jai Alai, it also definitely falls off a cliff, I just don't know where exactly the cliff is. But I can't get it here in Colorado and so usually pick up a sixer when I'm visiting my dad in VA, and leave it there, where my brother usually finishes off my leftovers. Recently I had a 4 month gap between visits and my brother apparently missed the Jai Alai sitting in the back of the beer fridge so I had a chance at one that was about 6 months old from canning date, though continuously refrigerated. The deterioration was patent, though admittedly, no blind taste test...

 

I think that is a common belief both within the industry and among beer drinkers (certainly better protection from oxygen plays a big part in that), backed up by breweries' own bottling/canning line lab results in some cases. With the rise of "craft" canning, it is frequently mentioned in these sorts of threads, which it has made we wonder lately -
Does any brewer have a different suggested shelf life/pull date for their cans vs the same beer in bottles? Now that'd be interesting - and probably would never happen...

 

Often the influence of the packaging line is overlooked in these discussions. Smaller breweries have less than state of the art bottling or canning lines, due to cost.

When someone says a big breweries IPA stays fresh, well they might have very low Total Packeged Oxygen on their Krones bottling line, or on their KHS canning line. The smaller breweries have higher TPO, so the beers stale faster.

One of the local ones bought an old bottling line, there were start ups lined up to buy the old 4 head manual filler.

 

Yeah, pretty regularly overlooked, and sometime folks even discount or argue against the importance of the line and TPO when insisting on the virtues of using Bottled On dates vs. using Best By dates.

 

You know, I just cracked open a Jai Alai canned in March when I was in Orlando... I expected it to be "bad", but I was pleasantly surprised how good it still was! Not as incredible as a fresh can, but it was damn good for having almost 4 months on it.

On the other side of the coin, I have ~2 month old Three Floyds stuff (Gumballhead, Alpha King and Yum Yum) which have all drastically dropped in flavor and became very malty and blah. Big difference. I will likely just give away what I have left of the FFF to be honest, I don't really want it.

All beers were properly stored and chilled the entire time. Crazy how bad the FFF stuff held up.

 

I prefer to drink them much closer to when they were packaged. I've had most of my favorites right off the canning line and weeks later, not a huge difference, but I still prefer to open them early.

IPA's treated properly are always going to be better than 90% of the stuff that sits in ambient temps on the shelves of bottle shops.

 

Why don't bottle shops build giant walk-ins? I'm talking about the serious bottle shops that already have high visibility and do enough business to support it. Seems like it would really push a craft-centered store towards the top. Have a beer cave that is dark and cold and store all the good stuff in there. So many respectable bottle shops have IPAs sit in cases on the floor in the warm temp for weeks-months at a time.

 

I bet it makes a difference to some degree, but I bet the graph is logarithmic, not arithmetic. I don't care much anyway, as long as it was kept in the cold.

 

weird, I didn't see it on the shelf here at all

 

The graph is posted above.

 

they sit on wood shelves for months in our one crappy bottle shop here in the biggest city in 4 surrounding states

 

Jeff,

A top of the line canning/bottling line is only as good as its maintenance protocol. If not properly maintained the TPO/DO levels will not be as good.

Constant testing and measurement is the best QA here. Hopefully the commercial breweries are conscientious in this matter.

Cheers!

 

I had a 3 month old Jai Also sent to me as an extra. It still tasted great. It made me seriously rethink dates on IPAs.