How does distribution work?

Maybe you have shitty ass distributors in your area but around here the distributors do a pretty good job of taking freshness seriously, ensuring stock is rotated and old beer is pulled from accounts and dumped.

Also, there is a difference between what beer geeks consider "fresh" and what is in code for a brewery. As long as a beer is within the shelf life dictated by the brewery the distributor is expected, and should make every effort to sell the product. Now, if you are often encountering a beer that is past is best by date then there is definitely a problem.

 

Distributors DO check for freshness on IPAs or styles that need it. If they don't, simply don't buy there... However
Centennial IPA is a pretty widespread beer, it's weird you can't find it fresh.

 

Sorry to hear that - maybe they should consider another business? I'm guessing that the number of "pissed off" beer buyers who bought out-of-code beer without checking the dates (aka - "trusting the retailer") still far outnumbers those retailers.

Me, I'll trust only the brewers' own codes rather than the retailers' claims of "Oh, that just came in!" or "That beer stays fresh for two years."

Perhaps things are different in France? I don't claim they don't exist, but buying beer for the past 5 decades and I've yet to come across a beer store where I couldn't find out-of-code beer.

 

That was perfectly stated.

 

Absolutely agree with the above comments. Retailers can only put on the shelf what they are provided. Do you think they call up the distributors and say hey send me some IPA thats been sitting in the corner collecting dust?

Reality is, if its a national product that has to clear through a distributor before getting to a store there is always going to be the chance of a 'freshness' issue of some degree. If its a local product then it is probably coming direct from the brewery or through a smaller local distributor so will get to the retailer much faster and fresher.

For the most part most beer on shelves at any given retailer in most states are not coming direct from the brewery to that retailer. The product is going through a large 3rd party distributor which is usually either because that is how the brewery distributes their product or more typically because it is required by liquor laws in the state of final destination or state of origin that it must got through a 3rd party distributor before reaching the retailers.

Personally though, most of the beers I prefer to drink (stouts, barleywines, barrel aged..etc) I usually put down to age for various periods of time anyway so a little distribution lag has never been an issue for me. And when I want fresh On The Wings of Armageddon or Two to the Dome or any other beer I want fresh I jump my ass in my car and go to the brewery to get it super spliffy fresh. And then I can say thank you to the fine people that brewed it for my enjoyment and laugh with other beer geeks about how frikkin awesome the beer we're drinking at that moment is right at the source and finding out if there is something new that needs to be tracked down.

 

It's simply a recent trend, coming with the popularity of American IPAs. You don't really need to check the freshness of Belgian beers or stouts or stuff like that, more often that not the year is enough. But with IPAs people became obsessed with the date, both in the US and Europe, checking now the DAY it's been brewed, not even the month... Maybe the example I've given with Saveur Biere is an isolated case ? But it's the biggest online retailer in Europe, so that's a pretty big example. They've told me themselves that they can't afford to buy old IPAs. We're French, so when we're not happy we say it loud and clear. Saveur Biere has a pretty active Facebook page, so they don't want customers there starting to shout how stale the beers they sell are. So they've become proactive and if they can't check freshness, they simply don't import it. From them, I've just bought pseudoSue by Toppling Goliath that were brewed in January. Given the fact it had to cross the Atlantic, go to Mikkeller in Denmark who's their official European retailer, then to France, it's pretty good. They also told me that often it's the breweries themselves that refuse to sell because they think it's not gonna be fresh enough by the time it's sold. So in a way I guess we Europeans are lucky to have that double safety and we don't really need to check for freshness. If it's there, it's got to be.

 

US brewers (and some beer drinkers) have been concerned with beer freshness for a long time.
BEER FRESHNESS AND DATE CODING

 

I'm sorry but a few quotes doesn't really make this a trend. Besides before the Craft Beer movement American beers were mostly awful.

 

What do you notice on hefes that aren't fresh ? Is the banana gone or something when you drink an imported Weihenstephaner or Ayinger ? I mean we're talking big German breweries. So not only are they big and can afford proper bottling with little oxygen in the bottle, but they're GERMAN so they reach for perfection, it's in their blood. I would believe a hefe keeps its taste a lot longer than IPAs... I've never had a Weihenstephaner that didn't taste the same as the previous one, and I had some both in France and while I was living in Australia.

 

In reality...it depends mostly on the brewer. In my 24 years in the business I've had the chance to observe two of the very best.

First? Anheuser-Busch.

Why? A seemingly overwhelming obsession to freshness that is so fanatical, it actually drives some retailers crazy. Sales reps generally rotate all accounts once every four weeks and are held accountable by their distributor management and brewery field personnel. Out of code beer results in immediate discipline and in many cases results in termination for repeat offenders. If you run into an AB field rep, greet him with a smile and a request to see his code book...it'll be in his left front pocket.

At the warehouse level, everything is First In, First Out. Pallets are distinctly marked with code date and are always pulled in order. Drivers are critical in the quest for freshness and it's their responsibility to rotate older beer stacks to the front and place new beer in the back rows...and their feet are held to the fire by the sales reps. A driver that 'slams & jams' (i.e. doesn't rotate) makes the reps job 10x harder. Same holds true for merchandisers; and for every Merch that doesn't rotate, there is a line of guys just waiting to get into this business to replace him.

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Second? Stone Brewing.

Why? Because they also do a very effective job of educating their people and holding them accountable. They also write distribution agreements which hold their wholesalers across the nation responsible for beer quality. In addition, since the number of brewery reps they field is considerably smaller than ABI, they engage consumers in an effort to unearth any out of code product which may have slipped through the system.

How cool is this: http://www.stonebrewing.com/freshbeer ?


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So kind sirs (81tillinfinity & NotHereForGold), in closing I'd like to simply say that it appears to me that you live in an area where the brewer/distributor work force isn't completely doing its job to your satisfaction and for that I feel very sorry for you.

To the OP...this isn't a three-tier problem, it's a three-tier solution, but it's up to the brewers to care enough about their product to get better execution in the trade.

To all...this has been a long rant and if you are still reading I'd simply like to say "thanks!".

 

That was perfectly stated.

Haha I know what you mean with Bud reps, same with Miller. And you are right, I do live in an area that the salesmen could care less about the beer they sell and the drivers are just trying to get done earlier than they should.

 

I think you left Russian River off your list. While freshness is not a problem given the rapid turn over of their beers its my understanding that in the area where they self-distribute if a retailer isn't keeping the beers chilled and properly stored they'll have a chat with the retailer who can then be cut off if they choose to ignore the RR requests. In areas where they work through distributors I've heard that they call a retailer who's not taking proper care to refrigerate and store the beer properly. If that doesn't help matters they will then have a chat with the distributor explaining that they are not happy, etc. so the distributor can have a chat with the retailer. Seems to have some teeth and seems to work pretty well. (Of course many small breweries won't have that level of "clout" but it seems to me many also don't push the matter either. But I also know that some others care quite a bit and do what they can.)

 

I used to work for a distributor and have actually dealt with the "freshest beer possible" request. For a good customer, meaning the retailer and not the final customer, the distributor will do their best. In the cases that I'm thinking of, however, there was no choice - the beer that had come in was the beer that had come in... it had been properly rotated (actually just sold out) and there was no old stock, and thus there was nothing fresher to choose from.

Sometimes the beer coming in from the brewery was already "old". Other times it was expected to be "old", as in it takes at least a week to cross the country, and there's usually time in the warehouse before it even leaves their dock, etc. OR, as in the case of Chimay for example, it's literally being shipped from the main distributor by the full truck load and you're either buying the whole thing or you're not buying it at all and then you have a whole lot to dispense to smaller distributors ..... it's complex. ---- but KUDOS to Stone for being able to make their "ENJOY BY IPA" happen.

 

Stone has pallets of expired enjoy by 1/29/16 mixed beers around here...mainly seen it at Targets

 

Ignoring how ridiculously entitled that comes across, it's also just plain asinine. Sometimes I prefer an IPA have a couple weeks of age on it. I've had 2 day old Surly Abrasive that was not nearly as good as it was after I left a couple cans in the fridge for a couple weeks.

 

Not a bad thing for certain styles

 

I think you may want to look up the definition of "entitled".