I was very excited to see Lagunitas Little Sumpin' Sumpin' on the shelf here in Maine, so much so that I sprung for a six-pack. I thought, "it has to be fresh and delicious, seeing as Lagunitas just made it into Maine in mid-June." Boy was I wrong. This beer tasted nothing like the beer I remember buying in NJ a mere year ago. It was stale, barely hoppy, and not aromatic, i.e., NOT fresh and pretty darn oxidized at that. Educating myself about Lagunitas' coding system revealed that they do use a Julian date on the bottle, but this doesn't include a year. My bottle read 18852405, meaning it was bottled on the 188th day of the year, so either 7/6/12, 7/7/11 or ealier. Based on the way it smelled and tasted, I'd have a hard time believing my beer was bottled in July 2012. A year makes a massive difference with hoppy beer that is meant to be consumed within three months of packaging. To say the least, I'm disappointed to pay full price for such an old, oxidized six-pack.
Yeah Ive found all the Lagunitas that hit the shelves to be fresh and tasty... Hop Stoopid included. FYI they just tapped a keg at of Lil Sumpin WILD at Novare.....
This is not an uncommon experience with craft beer. Reminds me of when Founder's entered MA with stale beer - those flavors stilll stick in my head and I remember it every time I see an overpriced six pack of Centennial IPA on store shelves. Have yet to buy it since my first purchase.
Similar experience here with the IPA from them. When they first came into Maine I bought a couple bottles of it and it was delicious. There was a time of about 2 months where we didn't see anything from them so when they re-appeared on the shelves with much more of their line-up I figured it was fresh so I grabbed a sixer. Ended up being super boring, none of that big hop flavor I got with the first couple bottles I had. Just reinforces my thought that local brewers will always have the edge with freshness vs. breweries shipping their hop forward beers all the way across the country.
I tend not to buy hoppy beers from outside of New England unless they have a clear and understandable bottle date on them. There's too much risk when it comes to hopped up beers unless I'm positive they're fresh enough. When I'm looking for an IPA, the local scene tends to be my purchase because the likelihood is greater that it hasn't been sitting in some warehouse forever.
But at least Founders has pretty easy to read bottled on dates. They just hit the shelves in NH and everything I've seen so far has been from mid-June or later. I currently have two bottles of Little Sumpin Sumpin in the fridge and the julian date code is nowhere to be found on either of them.
I was interested in buying some pale ale today but passed because I couldn't find a code on the bottle. Maybe I'll tweet up LagunitasT and tell him to take some gov't handouts so they can afford to clearly date their beer. ;-)
