Old IPAs - What to do about this problem?

Kudos for explicitly stating "process" in your post. Process is extremely important to achieve a given outcome.

Cheers!

 

Your experience at HF mirrors mine with Trillium in some ways. I've also popped Heady Topper on the day of delivery and it is never as good as it is a couple of weeks later.

As for Be Hoppy, I attribute the draft issues to either lower turnover or poor draft lines. It's very good on tap at the brewery and it's very good at a restaurant where I often find it (which is owned by the people who own the brewery). But I've had it be mediocre at other places.

 

Report it to Stone: http://www.stonebrewing.com/freshbeer/

 

Drink them! I drank an Enjoy By 4-20 on May 25th I believe and even wrote a post about it. It was amazing! But a representative from Stone emailed me and said she was sorry and that the beer should not have been on the store self that long.

 

I only drink IPA's within 5 minutes off the bottling line.

The 6th minute causes too much declination in the flavor.

 

Freshness is important but it's a bit overblown on this site, particularly if the beer has been in cold storage.

Still I've always wanted to try the new Ballantine IPA... but the only bottles I ever find lying around in my area are EIGHT months old...

Hey I am not a freshness snob, but no I am not buying that beer as much as I really want to try it

 

Expanding on my initial point. Basically store owners and distributors just have to be more conservative on stocking less of the expensive priced beers so they don't become old or shelf turds. Low price point seems to move beer in greater volume from store shelves more than quality product.

 

Yes they are most likely overestimating demand. But I do think it's tied to the fact there are so many more breweries now and so many great IPA's being produced. And while the craft market share has gone from 5% to 11% in the last 5 years, the pie is being split so many more ways that beers like Sculpin aren't the best option anymore, fresh or not.

 

If you see a lot of old IPAs, you have to buy them to clear shelf space or they won't get in new ones.

 

As someone living far from any American IPA producing breweries, I've actually grown accustomed to the way older IPAs taste, in particular past the 3-month range (we seldom see anything fresher). I do understand that fresher ones do have a certain zing that isn't found in other beers, but I think that the complexity of an aged IPA can be something to admire as well.

 

I would love to see some outrageous law implemented that only allows a x-mile distribution for all beers, across the US.
That way everything would mostlikely be fresh. And people would have to use energy to go traveling for their fresh (or not so) beer instead of it taking the transit time to come to them.

 

Drink them super fast so that no one else notices the printed-on date.

 

One doesn't get sick from drinking an old IPA.

 

I know a place that has a few Sixpoint Bengali Tigers on the create your own 6pk shelf. In the old fat cans.

 

dump... reload

 

It tastes like grapefruit juice. I liked the Habanero Sculpin though.

 

A lot of the times its not the breweries fault though, gotta watch out for the distributors. At least I know this is true with my area and Firestone (I work in a store in North Jersey). They will buy too much and it will sit in the warehouse, or it will come in and they forget to tell the reps (which happens too often), the truck just takes TOO long getting across the country (a shipment of FW was supposed to have been "on the truck on its way" for like 2 weeks...). The beer will come in and its already got a month and a half on it.
The freshest I've seen here in Jersey was around 2 weeks.
As for Ballast point (which is distributed by a different distributor) I've seen cans of Sculpin that were 6 days old... How the hell did it get driven from Cali to here, processed by my distributor, then delivered to me in 6 days? I've also seen this with Stone.

TL;DR A lot of times its the distributors that mess up and the beer sits in their warehouse or in transit for too long