Regarding "Freshness"

Stella Brew in Winston-Salem, is a good place for fresh Burial products. To your point, with so many good brewers here in NC, it is easy to find recently made products. I bought a 6 pack of Jade IPA a couple of weeks ago that had been canned only 6 days prior. And this was from a Lowes grocery store.

 

Very true. Franchise laws, quantity self distribution caps, and powerful wholesale lobbies are an oft repeated truth in many locales. These are greedy and inhibitory practices.

 

I see that 2 months is a pretty good age limit for IPA's, do y'all have limits for other types? Or is 2 months a pretty standard limit regardless?

 

Let's use the 'other side' as a starting point and work out way back:

For me higher gravity beers like Barleywine, Quad, Tripel, Dubbel,... have longer best by dates and for my palate these sorts of beers actually improve with age (e.g., 1+ years and longer). I also find that Sours hold up well with age.

Darker beers like Porters and Stouts typically have longer duration best by dates. Last evening I drank a homebrewed Robust Porter that I bottled on 10/25/18 and that beer was excellent at around 6 months of age. This beer will still be good 6 months from now.

Lighter gravity beers should be consumed more quickly IMO. Pale colored lagers (e.g., AAL beers, Helles, Pilsner, etc.) are best consumed within 4 months of packaging IMO and the fresher the better.

Cheers!

 

Agreed largely with what @JackHorzempa said. At the extreme end, some things like JW Lees and Thomas Hardy are sought out over 20 years after bottling. Many traditional styles of wild ales will have 5 year best by dates. With bigger stouts and strong ales and the like I have zero qualms about a year, possibly even two.
Once you get into the dark but lower abv and final gravity beers like porters and brown ales and even stuff like reds or ambers I wouldn't buy anything pushing a year old and, unless I had experience with the brand that made me feel differently, probably wouldn't touch anything over 8 months from packaging.
Lagers fall into a similar category to me as IPAs. From trusted quality brewers I'm willing to pick up something that is 4 months old, knowing that I'll be drinking it in short order. For a new to me brewery I want it at less than 2 months

 

Much appreciated, you are a gentleman and a beer scholar.

 

This discussion is strongly focusing on IPAs but the fact is that the perfect drinking age is individual to the style of beer and your personal preference. Many beers are ideal for bottle conditioning or aging, developing nuances and enhancing the yeast character even as the hop character diminishes. This isn't undesirable in something like say a Saison with brettanomyces, while it can be undesirable in, as you say, a dry-hopped IPA. On another token, some craft IPAS are just super unbalanced straight from the brewery and develop interesting nuance as you let the hops diminish even if that isn't what the brewer intended. Maybe this is because I'm fed up with having an over-hopped, one-dimensional beer but my point is, "freshness" isn't everything, and certain styles look good with a bit of age on them.