IPAs not refrigerated??

At Costco it's bs. Anywhere else I'm ok with it though.

 

I have heard. dont quote me on this. but if its stored cold keep it cold till you drink it. if it was warm, chill it before you drink it. but dont move the beer from hot to cold. cold to hot etc. so if they store it warm, you should buy it warm. and chill it in your fridge. Thats what i have heard and my local liquor store says the same for mailing beer.

 

There is only so much control you have over your beer. When it ships you have no control over the temperature, for IPAs your best and most reliable bet is bottling date.

 

With all the Stone 4/20's on the floor I've wondered this...........I've often emptied out the cold slot and taken warm floor ones but never did side-by-side

 

they are fine.

source: drinking lots of cases of ipas that were at room temp.

 

I generally won't buy warm IPAs or pales. There are plenty of places selling those same beers cold so it's easy to pass up. I know not every part of the country has that luxury, though.

When I do buy them off the floor (warm, whatever), it's because I won't find this beer anywhere else, warm or otherwise. Even then I only buy it if I can read the bottling/enjoy by date. I was burned too many times as a noob and learned my lesson the hard way on that (turns out east coast/midwest IPAs aren't supposed to taste grassy after all ).

Oh and my personal rule of thumb with IPAs and pales is get them cold and keep them cold, regardless of temp at purchase.

 

Chilling slows down aging, so, I can see the benefit. Maybe you can steal an extra few weeks of freshness. But if it's fresh it's fresh.

 

All beer meant to be consumed fresh benefits from refrigerated storage - it's not only "hops" that fade nor are hop flavor and bitterness the only aspects of beer flavor that are affected by warmer temps, just as it is not just IPAs that are meant to be consumed as fresh as possible.

As many will often point out, most beers are not refrigerated throughout the distribution system, or especially while being transported from brewery to distributor's warehouse and then to the retailer, but the longer it spends under refrigerated temps before being purchased, the longer it will remain tasting "fresh" and as the brewer intended.

An oft-repeated industry "rule of thumb":

--- Handbook of Brewing, William A. Hardwick, 1995​

 

I often pick up a carmelly sweetness, even if it's a lighter, drier beer that I know it shouldn't be there. Let's do ourselves a favor, even though we can't control shitty distributors who ship in unrefrigerated trailers. Stop buying beer on the floor to make a point, it's not ok. Especially for IPA's. Tell the liquor store it's not cool, I often do. You will be surprised that some may actually listen. If you go back, your favorite bomber might be behind a cooler door.

 

this is just crazy talk. few stores around me have the refrigeration capacity to keep anywhere close to all of the beer refrigerated. Maybe if they did, IPAs would taste good for longer than 2 months. if I started refusing to buy beer that had ever been warm, my only option would be going to the brewery, and I suspect the same is true for most of us

 

Not really. Beer should not go through extreme temperature changes (near freezing to extremely hot). Going from "warm" to "chilled" wont harm the beer

 

The best way to enjoy beer..

 

Most of the beer is not in the fridge at my grocery and practically none of it is in my bottle shop. I would not expect costco to care as much about that as we do. If you get that beer within it's drinking window it will fine even it it did not see refrigeration until it got to your house. I recently had a two hearted from novemeber that was not refrigerated and I was amazed at how well it held up.

 

Buy IPA from your local brewer. Nothing better than freshly canned or bottled IPA straight from the source and you know it will have been stored cold.

 

Most of the IPAs I buy aren't either because of dumbass laws (Oklahoma) or retailers choice. As long as it is reltively fresh I never seen much of a difference, but have never done a side by side. Used to trade a bit & a lot of that wasn't during perfect weather. Most of the IPAs or DIPAs I rxd including Pliney were great. Ideally I would want it shipped cold, stored cold, but not a deal breaker for me. Mind you, my cut off for freshness ( I a date I can read is actually on it ) is 6 weeks for IPAs &3 Months for DIPAs...

 

Not everybody has a "local" brewer.

 

I didn't say the stores around here keep ALL their beers cold, but the good bottle shops around here (and there are a lot of them) know to at least keep the hoppy stuff cold. Stouts, porters, tripels, etc. sit out on the floor where they're fine. With as many options as we have in this area, it's fairly easy to skip buying warm ipas, etc. Sorry that's not the case where you live.

 

This doesn't matter nearly as much as you'd think. Cold from start to finish would be great (Thanks Alchemist!), but side by side we'd all be challenged to tell the difference between an IPA from the same batch that was cold from bottling to glass versus one that was shipped warm and sat on a shelf then chilled and poured.