Too Much Inventory?

Stores cater too much to the "one and done" crowd by offering too many choices. If those people weren't creating a demand to have so many choices, then there might be more turnover for a more limited selection that is there. Retailers are not entirely at fault here.

 

Actually Sponan raises an interesting question for me - has anyone ever taken a local beer (say a solid IPA) they can get super fresh and deliberately put aside a bottle and then get more for a few months to compare 1 month vs 3 month vs 6 month old beer that is ostensibly the same?

I always feel that under a month counts as 'super fresh' but from 1 to 3 months I usually don't think of the beer as old.

Old to me is about 4-6+

 

At what point would you guys consider Double Jack, etc to be "old?" I'm talking about if it was stored at room temperature.

I always see Double Jack around here, stored at room temperature. Its typically 3 months old so I never really buy it, but can anyone let me know how long this actually holds up?

 

I actually revised my prior post - I guess I do think 3 months is 'old' it is right on the border, but I usually think 120 days the line for me on IPAs

 

Price is king. Lower prices as "fresh-best" beer sytles get older and inventory will move. Question I have is it more beneficial for a store owner to return old beer to distributor/brewer or discount it on sale price? Not sure how that profit margin/business strategy works.

Heck, I saw a store that was selling Black Xantus bombers at around $16.99. At least 10 bottles deep on the shelf and barely any of it really moved at all for over 6+ months. Just last week they put a sale price $9.99 sticker infront of the bottles. Came back a few days later and noticed there were only 2-3 bottles left and owner move sale sticker back up slightly to $12.99.

I posted on another thread about the idea to discount hoppy fresh-best beers over time. Using Stone Enjoy By as example, for the 3 months after the Enjoy by date, sell it at 30% discount. Go to 50% off at 6 month marker and continue til its gone (or whatever discount seems to get the shelves cleared for the space needed for the current "Enjoy by".

 

This is a really great and important suggestion. Just like perishable foods at supermarkets (at least near me), food gets priced to move as it gets older. Very few stores do that with beer.

I certainly would be inclined to buy an old beer if it was discounted, although i wouldn't have considered it originally

 

Stores with low turnover just can't have IPAs except for the super popular ones that fly off the shelves. The idea of pricing perishable beers much lower is interesting.
Smaller stores shouldn't be trying to have everything. A good craft beer selection isn't necessarily an extensive one, but a well rounded interesting one, focusing on varying styles and new interesting breweries. A small store should fill a niche. They shouldn't be trying to compete with the big warehouse stores.

 

Yes. A few years back i bought a case of 5 day old DFH 90 min. and deliberately spread drinking the bottles out over about 9-10 months just to see for myself what I would pick up about the changes. One important lesson it taught me is that hop flavors are much more than just bitterness. Similarly I learned that it does become sweeter as the hops recede and the malt becomes more prominent, but that does not turn it into a Barleywine.

My review of that beer was done at about the 9 mo. mark and I still found it enjoyable, not the same as fresh, but enjoyable none the less.

 

It's a strange market. Certain rare/seasonal beers are gone as soon as they hit the floor, and other good quality beers linger on the shelves beyond their optimal drinking stage. Add in factors like "state minimum pricing" and sometimes the retailers can't discount beer, or at least not without jumping through a few hoops. Truth is, I can't figure it out.

 

I work for a local grocery chain that has recently started carrying a lot more craft in some stores. I was just transferred to a larger store with a bigger selection to work in the beer and wine department. I found about 6 cases of out dated beer my first day and I'm sure there's more, but I didn't have time to check everything. They had Southern Tier Unearthly dated 12/23/13. In a perfect world more stores would have people who actually care about freshness and have knowledge of craft beer, but that isn't really realistic. It's all about finding a balance between selection size and freshness based on your customer base.

 

Nothing really new here. Craft consumers are "very" fickle and bounce around to the "newest", often leaving good selling old favorites literally in the dust. The good retailers know how to move product along, and generally know trends happening a bit before everyone else. Truth is, no one ever bats a 1000, whether brewing, ordering at wholesale, or knowing needed quantities for consumers at retail. Beer is business.

 

I see a related issue quite often. A new IPA that has a decent rating on BA begins distribution in the area. This beer moves quickly initially, resulting in some IPA's which typically move well sitting on shelves. These age a little, and then many people won't buy them because they are two months old. Even distributors with generous buy back policies will not replace something this fresh. Unless the new beer is better than the old beer, it ends up being a loss for everyone.

 

I'm not completely disagreeing with you. I have a few problems with your argument though. I think BAs are still good consumers of beer, for the most part, because even when they complain about the freshness of beers from across the country - they still are not leaving the store empty handed. If something from across the country isn't available fresh, then the BAs (who care about freshness) will buy something else. This problem is self perpetuating, because the beer is only getting older and fresher beer doesn't replace it. There's still a problem with too much product on the shelves, which is partially caused by distributors forcing product onto the retailers or holding product at their warehouses to move older product first. Also, there is just too much product out there - whether that is because of the breweries or the distributors. I love the amount of choices out there, but it's not always a good thing.

 

This article made tons of sense to me, and I base my purchasing of IPA's & DIPA's off of it's findings.
http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2014/06/beer-is-the-new-milk-drink-it-fast.html

I also did my own taste tests with Alesmith IPA after I read this article:
1) fresh (< 1 month old and kept in the cooler)
2) kept in the store's cooler for 3-4 months
3) kept on the shelf at room temperature for 3-4 months.

Not much of a difference between 1 & 2, but 3 was quite different - the bright hop flavors had faded

I have no answer to the OP's questions, but I do see tons of old beer on the shelves everywhere and I've learned to not take chances.

 

I recently came across a store very much like in the OP in that they have really expanded their selection. I saw some stuff there that actually surprised me with how it didn't move yet- the Beer Camp box for example (fwiw- in other stores where I frequent, that was a very limited item). If they would have put it out front and center at a discount in August I bet it wouldn't still be sitting there.

This also dovetails with how some of these releases are distributed. To get these limited-release items a store has to commit to buying a lot of the year-round selections; a lot of times I bet that stuff is too much for the store to handle and it gathers dust eventually.

Still- if they are committed to rotating the stock there are ways to do it with sales and such.

 

I went to a small Kansas town to pick up my daughter's birthday gift when I decided to stop by a couple of small liquor stores ISO Ten Fidy. The first store had some OB, but had never heard of Ten Fidy. I believe this happens because some store owners are like, "Our distributor said (insert brewery name here) was good and it's a mover so we got some without knowing shit about them. Good, bad? We have no idea. We just do what our distributor recommends." You know it happens. They had some Deviant Dale's in the cooler looking like suspects in a lineup so I checked the date on the bottoms. Yep, February. OB has been available in KS only since March 10th this year so they've pretty much established a permanent address in that cooler. Then I look down at the floor along the wall and there's a massive pile of Modus Hoperandi just sitting there at room temp. Now Modus is pretty stable at room temps in its cans, but these some bitches had cobwebs and spider eggs on 'em. This store also had three whole coolers dedicated to beer you can buy across the street at the Quick Trip. Anyway...Some store owners just don't know enough about beer and should probably stick to liquor and beer cave type products. They asked if they should order some Ten Fidy. I said, "I wouldn't bother with it if I were you." That was my way of saying that I'm not buying anything now and I'm not coming back.

 

Right or wrong, you both have a valid argument.

 

This is actually the experiment I was looking for, thanks! So temperature makes more difference than age it seems. Might also be that the store cooler had less light too?

I wonder how that bodes for my beer cellar that is about 65 degrees (basement). It is all imperial stouts, so probably they hold up better since hops isn't a thing