How long do IPAs stay "Fresh"?

I have found that you can get beyond 90 days without losing anything, but I wouldn't push too much farther than that.

 

I bought a six-pack of Ballast Point Big Eye last week. I could not make out what I thought was the freshness date. The manager said the beer was delivered 12 weeks ago. It was stored on the shelf. I fear I bought it too late. The first one tasted plenty hoppy, but having never had it before, I don't know how it compared to a really fresh one.

 

I prefer to drink mine at 30 days or less. I tend to buy hyper local and only buy what I know I will drink in 30 days.

Of course there are exception, I enjoy trying different things and I follow the 90 day rule when buying from bottle shops or trades.

 

The short answer to your question - NOT LONG ENOUGH. Fresher is better each and every time for this style.

 

In my earlier days settled for within 90 days, since then i've gotten spoiled like many of my fellow BA's and cut that number in half, at least.

 

I got a bottle of Simtra from Knee Deep. Bought at Belmonst Station, got it home to Astoria and the bottled date was 7/20. Will test the theory of freshness. What do you all think?

 

I would be willing to bet that this beer would have been more flavorful in August vs. now (November).

Cheers!

 

Well, I'd be hard-pressed to turn down a case of ZD, too - it'll still be good, but you're not getting it at peak form.

My rule of thumb is, no later than 3 months for an IPA - and I generally don't go past 2 months (there's usually something fresher, or a style that doesn't rely so heavily on freshness available).

 

After reading these posts, I plan to be more observant of IPA freshness dates. I guess I lumped everything into the proverbial 90 window. Also, I will try to get many of my IPAs via local brewery growler fills.

Thanks for the good advice.

 

It's not the same for every beer. And the freshness date is not equally trustworthy. I've had beers that said drink by two months after the current date at the time that were gross malt bombs. Rule of thumb I'd recommend is never more than 90 days, sometimes more than 60, but really you want it under 45. I'll pick what I want based more on the date than what brands I prefer in general. Gimme fresh anything over old brand I like. One of the few breweries that have the consume by date that's trustworthy is Stone. I've drank their IPA so many times within a few weeks of the best by, and it was still damn good.

 

I have done the same about picking beers by the freshness date. Glad to hear what you have to say about Stone. We are getting their brewery here in Richmond!

 

I try to buy 30 days or less. With that said, I am of the opinion that the brightness of the hops, particularly in malt light, bright or citrusy IPAs, tend to wane very quickly: after two weeks or so. Those with a maltier backbone, depending more on the raw bitterness or maltiness hang out better.

So, beers like Pliny or Noble Ale Works beers fade very quickly; beers like Brown Shugga, Maharajah, Swamis, Hop Devil... tend to last longer. Canning certainly helps: Bells Two Hearted lasts very well. And a lot has to do with hop varieties: I think Citra, Galaxy, Mosaic, Amarillo and Simcoe are a bit finnicky and short lived; Centennial and columbus are more resilient...

Though this principle doesn't always play out well. I find that RuinTen fades abnormally quickly; as does 90 min by DFH.

 

They use Julian date code for their bottled-on dates. The first 3 numbers is the day of the year out of 365 and the last 2 is the year.

 

Centennial definitely makes a difference, I can drink IPAs with that a few months on. I find Cascade and Chinook to be good as well.

 

Thank you! I couldn't agree more. Except for Jai alai. Maybe GF sculpin a tad... The rest, months. If cold and dark. Shit I drink 3 month old enjoy by. It's fine!

 

I can't overstate how much this depends on unknowables (how the trucking company and then the distributor handled it) and the kinda-semi-knowables (how the retailer handled it).

A day at 90 degrees F (32C) does more damage than a month at 50 (10C), or so I think I read somewhere once. (Maybe this thread?)

I agree that some beers seem to hold up better, in my case it's the Firestone Walker Double Jacks I get from Grapevine in Denver (where they keep them in a 45 F cooler from delivery until purchase.). Because of some distribution quirks these tend to be 2 months old when delivered. Then people don't buy them, because they're old, so they get a month or so older, then people REALLY won't buy them, then Chris puts em on sale for $3 off per 4 pack, then I buy a couple cases and stick them in the keezer with my lagering home-brews at 35F (1.6C), and drink them over 3-4 months as the spirit moves me. They are GREAT, and they stay great, so I am believing the distributor keeps them at least cool-ish and FW must bottle them with like zero ppb of packaged O2...

 

You might be remembering something I've said around here before, which I learned from brewing classes at UCD. It's a basic rule of thumb that says for every 10* difference in storage temperature, the beer stales 3x faster.

That's about staling though, aka oxidation, and hop fall off would have a shorter time table.

 

ahhh...I may be mixing up hop fall-off and oxidation but isn't hop-fall-off at least in part an oxidative process? And even if on a shorter time-line, doesn't it mimic the oxidation time/temp curve on a graph?

 

Yes. But an IPA that's had its hop character muted with time is not necessarily 'stale' until considerably later. Its just, we as hop heads, prefer that especially fresh character from the hops in those beer.

I read today in the other IPA thread someone saying something along the lines of it being ironic that IPAs get bad so quickly given the historical reason for IPAs. While its true they packed those beers full of hops to make it through longer journeys, what they ended up with on the other side was something much more like a standard pale ale than what we consider an IPA because of fall off. They still weren't complete shit though, presumably. It wasn't until someone drank some early that the new style really got borned.

 

Hop fade is indeed an oxidation process.

Cheers!