Old IPAs

Jim,

Thank you for providing that link.

“When folks tell you cans help hoppy beers age longer, they’re commenting on the control cans have over oxygen ingress, but they’re not taking the control the brewers have over the product into account. If a brewery packages a beer with a lot of oxygen, say 300-1000 ppb, their beer will oxidize quicker than a brewery that packaged at 20-30 ppb. This has nothing to do with the package, this is the burden of the brewery, and it’s the most misunderstood part of packaging, Most breweries test carbonation levels and oxygen content prior to packaging, but a lot of breweries fail to test oxygen content post-packaging. This isn’t meant to call them out; fuck, good oxygen/carbonation measurement devices run around $25,000 (more than the typical cost of an intro employee’s annual salary). Cans may prevent ingress, but it’s the brewery’s job to keep the oxygen out in the first place.”

Does Victory Brewing measure the DO level in the bottles after packaging? If so, what is a typical DO level for a Victory bottled beer (e.g., what is the DO level in a bottle of Dirt Wolf) directly off the Krones line?

Cheers!

Jack

P.S.I am still hopeful that @Peter_Wolfe will chime in on this thread. He is extremely knowledgeable on this topic.

 

Key words there. If it was more than a month ago, chances are you aren't remembering very well.

 

Never had the luxury or the will to let my Heady sit around that long

I am off the opinion that the younger the IPA the better. I was not always a true believer until I had two cans of Jai Alai. One was two months old and the other was four days old. Both were stored properly. I did a blind taste and I easily picked the younger brew. Both beers were good, but the younger was better. I'm not racing around trying to find just bottled/canned IPAs, but believing what I know, I see no reason to buy IPAs more than a month or so old and no reason to let them languish once they are in my hands. I'm sure there is an optimum spot in the aging curve for me, and it probably varies from brand to brand, but I'll stick with younger is better.

 

Got a firsetone double jack as an extra in a trade that came in last week..it was bottled on Novemeber 13, 2013...am I safe?

 

it's fine to drink; it just won't taste very good or even close to its intended hop profile.

 

everyone has a different palate. even from day to day your tastes might change.

the chili i made on friday was good, was great on sunday, not so hot again on monday and outstanding on thursday. of course i ate different foods for breakfast/lunch and had water one day with the chili, beer another and an orange Fanta on another.

why is the debate always so cut and dry? why is there rarely ever discussion of the impact other factors have on what you are tasting? where you are, who you're with, how you feel, what you are eating with it, etc. these all play in to your impression/perception of taste.

it's not always so black/white as "this beer tasted one way 3 weeks ago, it tastes totally different today and that's because the beer is going south". it's a host of factors that are contributing to the perception of difference.

that's not say a beer HASN'T changed but maybe not so drastically as one would be led to believe

 

I had a Uinta Hopnotch/Hopnosh (whatever it's called now) last week; it had an "enjoy by" date of March so it was 2 months overdue and I liked it better than when I tried it fresh. And in case anyone cares, it was in a can.

 

I have some breweries fade faster than others also. Love Lagunitas, but Sucks, Stoopid, and Maximus fade really quick. Green Flash 6 months and it still taste close to its original self. Firestone Union and Double Jack hold up better than Lagunitas, but drop off quickly. If I am going to spend $12 on a 4 pack, I want it fresh and to taste like the brewer intended it.

 

Wouldn't the oxygen be driven out of the wort during the brewing process? And after oxygenating the wort the introduction of yeast should negate that? Yeah?

 

Just had a similar talk about this here - http://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/beer-shelf-life-hopslam.134471/ about some 5 month old Hopslam I had in my stash. The beer is extremely different at 5 months old and I didn't like it but again it's all subjective. They certainly were not spoiled or bad as I have had them stored cold and dark.

I might try infusing them for fun to see what I can come up with

 

I forgot about a bomber of Sculpin in my fridge a couple month or so ago... Opened it up and it was HORRIBLE compared to some fresh cans that I had on hand.

Old Pliny doesn't hold a candle to fresh Pliny. It's still good, but not nearly so.

My concern is sometimes as I trade bottles, and I drink and rate them, if I only have one bottle, how am I do know what the flavor is supposed to be. Sure I can read other reviews, but taste is obviously very subjective. Case in point, I got a bottle of Kern River Citra. It was about 2 months old and it tasted horrible to me. Was it a bad bottle? Everyone else seems to go nuts over it.

Guess I'll just keep drinking!

 

I have a batch one Pliny the Elder I'm saving for a very special occasion. Whales Bro!

 

i have a bottle of doom and some of last years devil dancer i found at a shop in cincinnati, i tried the devil dancer and it transformed into a nice Malt bomb. cant wait to do a side by side with this years when it comes out. As for the doom, im thinking ill like it better when no hops are present.

 

I've seen a lot of places offering "vintage" Sierra Nevada Celebration ale - some 3 to 4 years old. I found that the 2012 SNCA I drank this year was as good or better then the 2013.

 

You're going to the wrong liquor store in OK if you cant find fresh IPAS. I work at the Well of OKC wine and spirits off of memorial.

 

<
Wouldn't the oxygen be driven out of the wort during the brewing process? And after oxygenating the wort the introduction of yeast should negate that? Yeah?

Yes, brewers add oxygen to the wort pre-fermenation. This is used up by the yeast in the respiration process prior to anaerobic fermentation which consumes sugars and excretes CO2 and alcohols. The problem is after this stage, at every stage of transfer, filtration and packaging there is pickup of a small amount of O2 and this is where we try to minimize the numbers and hence maximize the shelf life due to oxidative staling reactions.

Jack, of course we do. Both inline on the filling line and also spot checked using the Zham tester which punctures the bottle cap. The numbers are inline with the specs I noted but each batch can have variability which is what one watches closely for.

Cheers, Jim

 

“…with most modern folks aiming for 30 ppb in the initial package.” I will assume that since Victory is a “modern” brewery you achieve this goal of 30 ppb.

“Given that number, I’d be surprised if crown caps really allow 1ppb per day.” Again, I am hoping that @Peter_Wolfe will respond to that. He is an expert in cap liner materials and he would be able to provide very informed input on this matter.

Below is from Peter’s profile page:

“I am a brewing scientist at Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis, Missouri. I currently research two major areas of brewing science: beer staling and hop aroma.

Beer Staling: this research focuses on the reactions and sensory changes that occur throughout the staling process and how packaging and aspects of the brewing process can increase staling resistance.

Hop Aroma: this research focuses on modernizing dry hopping techniques to increase hop aroma in beer on an industrial scale where traditional methods are less effective.”

Cheers!

 

had an older breakside ipa last week and was floored by it, absolutely fantastic. can't imagine its any better fresh than it was with 6 or 8 months on it

 

Jack et al,

This is, as you probably already know, a fairly complicated issue. There's multiple things going on:

• Oxygen already present in the beer as DO in the liquid or TPO in the headspace
• Oxygen diffusing through the polymer crown liner in a bottled beer
• Hop aroma compounds diffusing from the liquid into the headspace, and then into the crown liner material in bottles or into the polymer can liner material in a can.
  • There's no effective way to make a can without a liner or a bottle crown without a liner, so there's no getting around this....yet

Most breweries, large and small, are still using a standard PVC crown liner for their bottles. A few craft breweries (Sierra Nevada is one, I don't have a complete list) are savvy enough to use an oxygen scavenging crown. Tom Nielson and the crew at SN have a good handle on this, and there are decent scavenging liner materials being made by Dupont and Dow, among others. At Anheuser-Busch we developed our own crown liner material that scavenges oxygen because we weren't satisfied with what was on the market. To answer someone's earlier question, we found (at AB) that a crown liner without any kind of O2 scavenger would let in about 7 ppb of O2 per day. That's a lot!

Can you take ingress rates to zero on a bottle? No. Can you get them so damn close that it's negligible? Yes, and we've done that. Our bottles with our scavenger liner are now actually better than our cans (because the canning process intrinsically has slightly higher initial TPO).

However, as I mentioned above, oxygen ingress is only one part of the story. You also need low initial DO/TPO. If the delicate hop aroma is what you're trying to protect, well...I've got bad news. That same liner that is protecting it from oxygen is also a great lipophillic solvent for the (relatively) hydrophobic hop aroma compounds. One of the few studies that actually looked at this was done by Val Peacock in the 80's - he found that 80% of the myrcene had absorbed into the crown liner within 3 weeks. As to whether cans or bottles are better for preserving hop aroma, to my knowledge that has not been definitively explored. It's something I would like to investigate (as well as play with different materials that have the beneficial liner properties yet resist hop compound permeation).

Good hop aroma is a delicate, ethereal wonder. Every skilled brew master in the world will tell you their IPA is at its best when it's freshest. That's not to say it can't be good or even wonderful 8 months down the road, but it will be missing some hop aroma.

Hope that helps; I can try and answer any specific question you have as this is something I actively work on. I can't tell you our secret liner formula though

 

It definitely depends on the beer. There was one bottle left of Alesmith IPA sitting in the fridge at the shop I go to (before that it was on an end cap) and it was close to a year old. I picked it up considering I might not see it again, and I was extremely surprised how good it was. It could be personal taste or what-have-you, but it I enjoyed it.

I had a Hop Henge that was a few months old and it tasted like absolute garbage to me. It tasted like straight booze with a hop stem in it. I couldn't finish it which bummed me out because I hear it's a great beer, and I'm sure it is considering it's from Deschutes. Unfortunately every single bottle I've found since then has been out of date as well.

I just noticed there's a scientific explanation of this issue directly above me, which is a lot more helpful than what I just typed. Ah well, I'll post this anyway considering this was just my personal experience. DAMN YOU SCIENCE!!!