Old IPAs - What to do about this problem?

Is snark ever really warranted?

 

The problem with that is a majority of breweries use 90-120 days as the IPA "freshness" date, when you have people here arguing for six weeks, tops. That's ridiculous. Plus the whole expired milk can make you sick thing. Bad analogy.

 

Based upon my numerous conversations with a large number of retailers I agree with you that the 'weak link' are the wholesale distributors. I have never had the opportunity to 'tour' a wholesale distributor but I am 99% sure that if I did I would find many palates of hoppy beer that is many weeks (and many months?) old just sitting there.

Cheers!

Edit: I don't doubt that the wholesale distributors would claim that those beers are sitting there because not enough retailers are placing orders for those beers so maybe it is more of a systemic problem.

 

1. I would consider that a good thing if it happened as you described. I think we have too many choices because the current quantity of choices cannot be had in the real world without a substantial percentage of them being stale. Fewer but fresh is superior to more quantity with many stale. This isn't as controversial as some might make it out to be. You and I would ideally prefer a large selection of all fresh beer but come on, that's not realistic any longer.

2. The situation you describe would occur only under the assumption that we could get a lot of people to not buy the fresh stuff. I think that is an unlikely possibility, and that's why I suggested my preferred solution above to the original poster. The best course of action is to seek the fresh examples and repeat buy them regularly. It can work.

 

You're right. I just wanted to make the point that until it becomes universally accepted that beer is no longer worth buying after a certain amount of time, we will continue to see old beer on store shelves, and you can't really blame breweries for that.

 

Buy whats fresh, complain to retailer, distributor, brewery.

If the system doesnt serve customer needs, vocal customers can change the system. Everyone has interests here: you want fresher beer, everyone on sales side wants more of your money. Breweries want you to have their product at its best. Advocate.

 

I know what you mean. I too live in SEPA and I used to be a big Firestone Walker fan but ALL their bottles are super old....I'd much rather drink something fresh which is local OR if I want a West Coast IPA I know I can get Lagunitas which is generally much fresher than FW.

 

Well yes it is a bad analogy but I'm fairly sure that @October intended it to be a disanalogy - because people won't buy old milk, but they will buy old beer. There would have to be an enormous shift in attitudes towards old beer in order for this freshness issue to be taken as seriously as other products.

 

If I were a beer czar, I'd permanently limit production to those styles of beers that will hold up (and certainly improve/mellow) over extended periods of shelf-aging.

Then again, if I were a beer czar, there would only be stouts, porters and Belgians on the shelves, and if you wanted everything to taste like a pine tree, well there is a Douglas fir out back that should do the trick.

/wishful thinking

 

Snark is never warranted. I love this site because I can review beers and discuss topics such as the one we are debating, but BA is also a laughing stock in some craft beer circles because of the fact that almost every thread includes so many snarky comments from users who enjoy tearing people down because of "the absurdity of the OP's thoughts." If many people on this site spoke to someone in person the way they do on these threads, they would get their asses kicked up and down the sidewalk.

 

Upset about two month old IPA's? Those are considered fresh in WV.

 

I very rarely buy hoppy beers in bottles anymore because of this. If it's something I knew was just released in the last week or so, sure. Other than that, I've been sticking to growlers and taps (spoiled in the bay with Cellarmaker, Faction, Altamont, Berryessa, and Fieldwork), and only bringing home cans of Easy Jack, Pinner, and Grapefruit Sculpin. If the cans have some age on 'em, I'm not tasting it. Everything is bright and fresh tasting!

 

I agree with @rollom. I highly doubt an IPA at two months is a shell of its former self. Why is your threshold 40 days?

I agree, a super fresh IPA is different (see within a week). Beyond that, if an IPA is kept refrigerated (especially in a can) I fail to see how it's oxidized in 40 days. Unless there's something structurally wrong with the can/bottle.

Thank God I don't apply these stringent rules to all styles (although we should with most), otherwise I'd probably have to shop at the breweries only

 

For me, 40 days is the point at which I've noticed IPAs begin to lose their edge. That's just my preference. A friend of mine recently purchased a three-month-old bottle of Two Hearted, and he thought it was damn delicious.

 

learn to brew then you have as fresh an ipa as you like, and have time for brewing.

 

I'm not saying you haven't done this.....

But you've done a blind side-by-side with the same IPA, stored under the same conditions, at one week, two weeks, one month, 40 days, two months...?

Because if you haven't, you're severely limiting your purchasing options based on multiple assumptions.

 

How long an IPA is ‘good’ for is dependent on a number of variables:

· Some IPAs resist hop fading better than others

· How the IPA was stored. My local beer retailers store the vast majority of the beer at room temperature. Cold storage is ‘better’ since it extends the life of the beer

· How sensitive the individual is to hop fade. Some people can drink a 2-3 month old IPA and claim that the beer tastes OK – good. Another individual could drink that same beer and exclaim “yuck”.

· Etc.

Cheers!

 

Frankly that is my principle solution to this issue. I homebrew four batches of IPA per year. Between those batches I will purchase some commercially brewed hoppy beers but I will only buy them if they are fresh: less than 3 months old.

Cheers!

 

I think it is definitely systemic. Breweries take advantage of unscrupulous wholesalers and retailers, who have no particular commitment to providing a fresh product - which, to be fair, is probably a reflection on the majority of customers, who might not think of beer as something for which you need to check dates. So they unload however much a distributor will buy, the distributor holds onto a large back supply, and fills orders that way. One thing this does do is keep shipping costs down by shipping more beer in one go, but it probably makes it impossible for breweries to gage what the actual demand is for their products.

Now it's quite possible that the perception is skewed, and the amount of old beer sitting around is just a tiny percentage of the amount that actually sells, but this is an area where I think many craft brewers are just as unscrupulous and dollar-hungry as the macros. It's all about selling more and more beer, building more and bigger breweries, and basically just trying to make as much money as possible. Now I don't begrudge anyone making money by making beer, but it's foolish to think that the consumer isn't worse off in the process, when things like freshness are ignored in favor of profit, simply because enough consumers don't really care, and the old beer will still sell.

 

I have not done this experiment. Certain IPAs degrade faster than others. I've noticed that SN Torpedo and Stone IPA cling to life for a long time, while Sculpin and Union Jack experience a noticeable drop-off around the 8-week mark. I suppose I could do a side-by-side of every week-long permutation within two months, but in the ten years that I've been enjoying IPAs I've observed this phenomenon.