IPA freshness & Collateral Damage

Well, for the store owner it comes down to the calculation of what costs more, the expense of over-stocking to avoid stock-outs, or the prospect of under-stocking and not being able to meet demand. In my experience, store owners have universally selected the former.

For me personally, I have always had the same thought. It would love to walk into the store I frequent most and see its selection slashed and freshness dating observed. I then remind myself that I would be putting a greater amount of my choice in the hands of the store owner, who doesn't know as much about my tastes as I do. Thus, I continue to scan the bottle dates for the freshest beer available.

 

I would think so, I've always thought that brewers should brew more stouts/porters/barrel aged beers. I think IPA's should be brewed in batches and maybe less frequently.

 

It would be unrealistic to sell out their entire allocation of IPAs within a day or a week, although I'm sure they'd love it if that were to happen. One suggestion for store owners would be to store the IPAs in a cooler so that way they can be stored for a longer period without affecting the beer's quality drastically.

 

If retailers ordered less then older IPA would just start to back up and sit in the distributor's warehouse. I have a feeling that the real problem is that (some) breweries just make too much IPA.

 

It's hard for me to construct an argument why beer store owners caring more about freshness in their IPAs is something that would be bad for those who like fresh IPAs.

It might mean they stock less of IPAs that sit on their shelves and get old. This means less old IPA on the shelves. This is a good thing.

 

Yes, less selection of old IPA. I'm OK with that. If they can't keep fresh IPAs in stock due to high demand, then they'll try to buy more. If it sits around too long they'll buy less.

I have no interest in buying old IPAs from a store that has a wide selection of old IPAs because they don't care how fresh any of it is. I think you're overthinking things here.

 

Well if it meant fresher IPA's that would be good. I don't mean to the point of not being able to buy it, just not 30 cases stacked up.

 

Only one other commenter has touched on the fact that the distributers play a bigger role in this than the liquor stores. If the store owners buy less, the same batch sits in the distributers warehouse, end of story. If you want to question why wholesalers don't just buy less IPA, well, that's a laugh. The wholesalers and brewers work together to sell as much and as fast as possible.

 

True, and it makes perfect business sense too. After all, the BMC drinkers make up a sizeable portion of their customer base, and they have every right to fresh beer as do we. Heck, I'm not above picking up a sixer of Coors light if I fancied a light, inoffensive lager, and I sure would prefer to pick them up from the cooler as opposed to a rack...

 

i went into one of the dumpy B&Ws in my neighborhood yesterday just to see if they had anything interesting. I noticed that they had Green Flash West Coast IPA. "Cool", i thought, "haven't noticed that here before". Then I checked the bottle date - 08/21/13. Ugh. Those brews are already 5 months old. Moved on.

 

I recently picked up a 6er of bitter neighbor (black IPA) and realized after I got home that it was bottled SEVEN months prior. Does anyone know how the freshness issue might differ with a black IPA?

 

If you consider a black IPA as a overhopped/dry hopped stout (or porter), then after 7 months, pretty much the aromatics would have subsided and the bitterness likely drops a bit allowing the stout-y qualities to show through more. So it ends up a hoppier stout IMO..

 

Message to breweries; Quality is better than quantity & rarity tastes more delicious.
Message to distributors; Push back on breweries & move product in/out faster
Message to retailers; Please refrigerate IPA & do not store in a sunny location.
Message to consumers; Drink more & enjoy life