Toppling Goliath in Chicago (2018)

Believe it or not, beer doesn't turn to poison after two months folks.

 

Yeah....but some of them taste like shit.

 

True but tell me why I should pay for 5 to 8 week old pale ale that is maybe average to past its prime? I can go to my local brewery to get a crowler/growler, fresh Pipeworks, Half Acre cans, the options are endless here. Not how I choose to spend my money in a crowded market

 

I'll just go up to sconsin and pick up some TG when I'm out there for cheese nugs and sausage. I know it will be fresh and from IA.

 

Bingo! This is where the industry is shifting to. And I, for one, and pretty damn happy about it.

 

Contrary to popular belief, I don't drink beer JUST for the wonderful carb and calorie loading.

As long as a beer tastes good, I'm happy, but a lot of the "fresher" IPAs don't taste particularly good after a month or two. It's kind of like mocking someone for not particularly enjoying two day old reheated Domino's pizza; yeah, you can eat it, but fresher options will taste way better.

Yup! The NE craze in Chicago has been partially responsible for some mediocre beer, but it also really put a magnifying glass on beer freshness, which is awesome.

 

Another example would be buy your girlfriend fresh flowers. Now buy her flowers from the same batch a week later. Any issues?

I really wish there was a way to quantify a beer's flavor profile so you could compare something like a graph or spectrum of different beers. You could also measure what parts fall off over time. Beer is kind of like music, you have highs, lows, and midtones, and you hope they all blend together correctly.

 

Yeah, that would be a cool idea. You could have the ranges a stout has (some of them start out really hoppy, but obviously that fades over time and a new profile starts to take over), the (ballpark) ideal drinking times for IPAs, best time to drink sours or beers with specific yeast strains, etc.

 

I will ALWAYS buy the freshest beer I can but if I've never tried a particular beer and its less than 8 weeks old I'll buy it. I know what I'm getting into when I buy that 8 week old beer my comments are more that no one on this stupid forum can stop complaining about 3 week old beers from half a country away.

Saying that a 3 week old beer isn't fresh is super silly. I understand its not as fresh as the cans that Hop Butcher for The Hailstorm Alarmist can deliver within hours but lets have some reasonable expectations.

 

In general I agree with you. The problem is that specifically in this thread, we're talking about TG's distro, and those PS cans seem to either fall off super fast (so that 3 or 4 weeks is already too much), or the quality of beer in the cans has dropped off fairly severely in the last year or so. I haven't had the Feb. cans, so maybe those are better, but the month-olds from both Dec. and January did not justify purchase.

tl;dr - 3 week old beer in general is not too old to purchase by any means, but I personally will not be purchasing PseudoSue cans that are 3+ weeks old, at least for a long while. I've been burned by 3 separate 4-packs at this point.

 

Just found out something interesting last night at a bottle share. Apparently the TG goods coming from Fla. are shipped to Decorah first and then to the distributor. That at least sheds some light on the 4-5 week old beers that our being distro'd around here. I myself could not understand why product wasn't hitting the shelves sooner but this makes sense to me now (dim light bulb shining over my head).

Guess I will just have to tough it out until the new brewery is up and running in Iowa or as someone mentioned, hop across the border to Wisconsin.

 

I did buy the 3 week old Psudeo Sue when it hit Chicago and I enjoyed it. IMO though, I don't want to take the risk of buying a 5 week old Tsunami when I feel there might be a drop off in the taste. I like to enjoy different variety of beers on the weekends, so what if it sits in my fridge for another week or two? Now we're at 6-7 week old IPA. It's an easy pass for me.

 

Yeah but the beer from IA is HAZY, and we all know that at that point, taste no longer matters.

 

Binny's Grand got a shit ton of the Golden Nugget (2/27) today. I made the 2 look like a 3 and convinced myself I have a beer that is still being brewed. Ha Ha, now I have the freshest beer! Suck It!

 

I have not heard this... And what beers are "they" talking about? There are quite a few bombers being made in Wisconsin like Pompeii, so there's also that.

 

Just a running gag in the Great Lakes forum about the lifespan of hoppy beers. You essentially need a time machine to enjoy them...and even then, by the time you've asked your server for one, it's too late.

 

I have no idea what the GI analogy has to do with anything. Explain how you believe that Surly may have "forced" retailers to carry a high quantity of beer that does not sell quickly, and please account for the reality of the three-tier system and the fact that a distributor, and not Surly, provides allocations to retailers.

I'd imagine Surly has a Chicagoland rep, but the idea that Surly has the ability to check canning dates at every retailer selling their product is silly and super unfair.

You didn't address my analogy. Are you mad at the milk producer when Jewel sells expired milk? Are you mad at the farmer when the bodega on the corner sells expired chicken?

 

Yeah, agreed. I would buy PW and HA no matter what, because they make great beer, but I mix in fewer options from other breweries than I otherwise would because PW and HA tend to be super fresh wherever you buy it. I was in the store around the corner from my house the other day and they were selling Two Hearted cans with an October 2016 canning date. That beer holds up pretty well and I'm sure it would still taste good (if obviously not as good as it would fresh), but I'm just not going to buy it when it's sitting next to week-old Pipeworks.