I think a lot of the old school proprietors actually believe that, and I think a lot of the new school proprietors suffer from the same hoarding instincts that lots of the geekery suffers with
Have you found this to be true? Assuming it is, I would be curious to learn what's considered "relatively fresh" in the restaurant industry. My own experience is to be very leery when buying age sensitive beers at a restaurant (ipas, apas, pils and the like). Every time I've asked a bartender or waiter if a particular beer is fresh, they have no idea (most don't understand why I'm even asking the question). Assuming the beer I ordered has a date code, it's not unusual to find that it's more than 6 months old. As for your comment about the greater likelihood of beer centric places holding onto old stock, I think it depends on the beer centric establishment. In my experience, these places often tend to have more knowledgeable staff, and thus tend to be more active when it comes to replacing old stock. On the other hand, I can recall a certain beer centric bar in Morgantown WV that had months old bottles of FH ipas and other slow moving ipas. Conversing with the staff, the impression I had was that they could see no reason to replace these beers, and figured they'd sell eventually. If someone complained about the quality (as I sometimes did), they'd address the problem then.
A number of years ago I posted about a visit to a German centric beer bar/restaurant in Philly: “It is my understanding that Schönramer have been imported to the US for quite some time. The 'trick' is finding it fresh. A few years ago, I went to a German bar/restaurant in Philly and I noted they had Schönramer Pils in their bottled beer menu. I gleefully asked the bartender if they had any available. He responded yes and handed me the bottle (before popping the cap). To my dismay I read that this beer was bottled over a year ago (but Kudos to Schönramer for dating their beer). I handed the bottle back to the bartender and ordered a draft German beer instead.” For further discussion, I was a bit dismayed to see that the bartender just put that beer bottle back in the refrigerator (behind the bar) to be sold to some other customer who didn’t check the date before drinking the beer. An instance where it is ‘better’ to drink draft beer (presuming clean beer lines)? Prost!
Couldn't give an exact number, but usually because beer is such a small part of the inventory, and a lower seller, they are only ordering the amount that they expect to sell between deliveries. Not every person receiving a shipment checks dates, but I always did, and would send things back. Due to beer being a smaller, but necessary, part of the business, they're ordering just enough to meet minimums. Some larger distros that have high minimums are ditched in favor of others that are more reasonable. If you don't have to have BMC or the big imports, you're probably not dealing with their distributors, and maybe don't carry the better known craft/import options because of it. That's cool, you can get some really great and interesting, if lesser known, options from a smaller distro that is more reflexive. Again, it depends on the business. There will always be blind spots, and also folks that just don't care. But I've found that wine/cocktail oriented places trend towards having a few well thought-out beers that will be of the same standard as their other beverages.
Hey, at least they showed you the bottle before opening it. The restaurant I alluded to in my OP always opened the bottle before serving it to a customer (as that was their policy). After a couple of bad experiences getting old, stale beer, I learned to ask the bartender to let me look at the bottle first before having them open it. In fact, I would typically have the bartender bring me several different brewery beers, in the hope that at least one of the bottles would be relatively fresh.
Outside of certain bottle or cask conditioned beers, it's always better to drink a beer on tap... under ideal circumstances (i.e. the establishment knows how to serve the beer properly and keeps their lines clean).
Thanks for the info. "Limited time" Given the beer market, I'd think that every new Trappist beer is "limited time" even if it isn't planned that way.
