Old Firestone Walker bottles everywhere

I think the people that say "it's too expensive, and most people don't know what it is" are mostly mistaken. I think someone else mentioned this, but it seems to me the real reason is that there is SO much other stuff out there. As great as FW beers are (and Stone for that matter), new and just as good (if not better) beer is being released almost every week/month. There's so much other stuff out there that it seems like FW and Stone have been relegated to the back a bit. In California, it's definitely not an issue of familiarity.

 

I have contacted breweries a couple of times about way out of date beers of theirs in a local store. They were very responsive and appreciative. Breweries are about quality, distributors are about moving product. Ideally, the two come together well.

 

I live in Firestones back yard. Let me know if you need something.

 

we have this same problem in NJ, and I always attributed it to poor distro from coast-to-coast, so I'm surprised to hear about older beers on shelves in Cali no less! Wookey Jack, Double Jack, Union Jack, etc., are often 4-5 months old by the time we see them here.

I found Double Jack bombers that had been bottled TWO WEEKS AGO once and nearly fell out of my shoes!

 

This sucks. I always find fresh Union Jack and double jack here in CO. And it's so much better fresh. I feel for you guys.

 

I think it's market saturation. I have tried most of Firestone's line, Union Jack, Pale 31, DBA, Velvet Merlin, I have never had a problem with freshness. I bought a Union Jack six pack it was so good I drank it one night! Hangover.

 

I wish Firestone Walker would come to MN. We would do our best to drink their beers before they get old.

 

My local shop in NJ has been seeing 3-5 week old Double and Wookey pretty consistently lately. Pretty impressive stuff to see the gold capped DJ.

 

This. I drove all around denver trying to find fresh wookie jack but the best I could do was 6 months. I don't get why it sits on the shelf because it's amazing fresh

 

You would think you would but we thought the same thing in Texas. For such a long time we got almost no good beers distributed here and in the last year or so we got Founders and Firestone among others. After everyone getting all exited they sit just like everything else now. The only thing people go crazy for is the seasonal/limited stuff, I guess that's the same everywhere.

On a related not I've always thought that IPA's should be smaller batch. I mean when my local gets 60 and 90 minute IPA they literally buy it by the pallet, they'll have cases stacked 5 feet high. There's no way that will get sold in a reasonable timeframe

 

I don't even bother looking at Double Jack and Union Jack bottles anymore. The bottled on dates are usually 3-6 months old.

 

Except for the old wookey jack, it seems to move off the shelves pretty fast in western MA with new shipments coming often.

 

It's the price point combined with the rapid decline in flavor as it ages. Nobody wants to pay $14 for a four pack unless it is very fresh, so whatever doesn't sell quick sits for ever.

 

In eastern MA I can think of a couple of stores that have one or two four packs of double jack that are leftover from old shipments. They get new shipments and all the fresh stuff goes, but those older ones stay on the shelf gathering dust. At these places you can always find double jack, but only because they over ordered a few shipments ago. Fresh is hit or miss. I think the same situation occurs in a lot of places leading to the impression that there is a ton of old FW out there, when the reality is the limited amount of stuff that doesn't get consumed fresh sits indefinitely.

 

On a somewhat related note...assuming beers like Double Jack, Dogfish 90 Minute, and other fairly available DIPA's/IPA's (depending on where you live of course) are stored at room temperature, at what point would you consider the beer too old and not worth purchasing?

The beer shops/supermarkets closest to me will always have some of these in stock, but always stored at room temperature and always 3+ months old. And I'm at the point where I cant even remember having these beers with their intended hop presence intact.

 

I know people are saying this is just how the craft beer scene is, but there is something about FW too... All the FW D/IPAs are old out here. I have almost never seen it fresh. Most of it is around 6 months old.

 

Every time I am in my local stores, I check to see if there happens to be any of their fresh IPAs. Sadly, I have had more success buying Parabola and Sucaba than fresh Double Jack.

 

I've had this problem in Colorado as well. I feel like I spend more time going through 'bottled on' dates than I do searching the different beers. It didn't keep me from buying their double jack once, but that will be the last time I try it until I have it fresh from the brewery...

 

In Central NJ I recently found Wookey bombers from Dec 2013 - no thanks. In same liquor store I found Wookey 4-pack from July 2014 - bingo! Funny, but the store has hundreds of bombers and most seem not to move, so I always check dates and if there is none (shame on the brewers that don't stamp the bottle) I pass . . .

 

Maybe, just maybe, 4-month old beer isn't as bad as we all want make it out to be. And maybe, because of the Pliny label (and the genius marketing behind it), we're all tricked into thinking that a hoppy beer sitting longer than two weeks has turned into utter garbage. Before the rise of Pliny and the unattainability of fresh Zombie Dust and Heady Topper, nobody ever made any mention of hoppy beers being "expired". Rather, people (in Michigan anyways) were hoarding cases of Hopslam because it kept so well for a year or more.

I just bought a bunch of Firestone in Nevada a few weeks back, and without date-checking, I can only assume (by reading the contents of this post), that it was several months old. The Union Jack was super bright, the Pale 31 was crisp and hoppy, the Wookey Jack was still resiny. Are we all fresh-hop brainwashed now?