Have you ever returned beer?

Ive def taken back beer. However ur talking about a high gravity brew thats only 4 months old. Good luck justifying the return. If ur gonna be a bottling line sucking hop snob u should check your labels.

 

Lol at the people saying 4 months old for a double IPA isn't enough to justify it being old when you have zero idea about how the beer was kept during that period. If the beer tastes off like the OP said, then that is enough to return. Most stores won't allow you to do this anyway though.

 

While the store should take care if you, I would also suggest contacting Souther Tier with the pertinent information including where purchased, bottle date, etc. the store may or may not inform the brewer.

And to answer the question, yes I have done this more than once.

 

Old beer is a plague upon my local Total Wine; I have to watch dates like a hawk in there (and everywhere else). A couple days ago I got lazy and bought a couple cans of HUB IPA, and one of them was canned on 8/20/2013... yeah, they gave me my money back on that one. It tasted like stale, dirty water. None of the floor employees give much of a damn about old beer, so the key is taking an issue straight to management, preferably the store manager. That goes for just about any place, I think.

Sometimes management doesn't even give a rat's ass too. For instance, at that same Total Wine I pointed out a can of Dales Pale Ale canned last October, and it's still sitting there to this day.... buyer beware, always.

 

There's an assumption guaranteed to result in buying old beer.

While it is the job of the distributor by contract with the brewery to keep fresh beer on the shelves, pulling old stock, crediting it, or replacing it with new stock, all too often it doesn't happen. And just as often, retailers leave it on their shelves, as well.

The codes are there so all (wholesaler, retailer, customer) can read them - I'm not about to assume the retailer has done it before I make my purchase.

 

Funny thing is Monk's Cafe doesn't do samples.

 

Yeah...I returned all of my KBS. Turns out I couldn't take the crooked labels

 

I don't and usually never return to the store for a little bit. I would end up in cuffs. I just take it as a loss.

 

I still have an unopened hellshire II

 

It's probably amazing.

 

I am not an IPA guy. The sixer in question was an amber lager. I don't begrudge some one checking the date on an expensive hop bomb. I do occasionally check dates but usually it's to find the oldest bottle of a Trappist beer. Grabbing a six pack of a popular lager from a bottleshop/bar/brewery IMHO should not require a date check

 

I once asked for a different beer on tap at a local bar after I drank a sip of a GL Dortmunder that was somehow sour...

The bartender was not happy with my request, but she gave me something else.

 

Twice.

1) Texas. A Shiner one-off. I was new to Texas, didn't know it was a one-off, and there were no dates on the bottle. One was absolutely awful, so I looked it up, realized my error, and the store offered to replace it with any six pack of the same value. Very reasonable. If it was fresh and I just hated the way it tasted, I would not have returned it. Beer bread, anyone?

2) Bell's Two Hearted. I'd only had it once before, so when I finally got it again, I was extremely excited. Well...it tasted really sour to me, so I brought it up here and it turned out that Bells was actually able to confirm an infected batch. It was purchased on a cross-country drive that I would be repeating two months later, so on my way back I stopped in with the email from QC about the infection, gave them the rest of the unopened bottles, and left with a replacement from their current stock. Again, very reasonable.

 

I bought Chimay with the red label once and it was totally flat. I thought about returning it but just wrote it off. I have purchased probably 25 bottles of Chimay in the last 5 years and only one was bad. If it became more frequent then I would definitely seek a refund but so far, no.

 

Iv'e never been, could you tell? I would love to go someday. It was meant to be a general statement though, and if you can't get a sample that doesn't really detract from what I said or from their policy. If you don't like it chances are you just don't like it, barring a few exceptions.

 

A bad pint--yes.

A purchase off the shelf--never.