Why I hate BA.

I am in agreement here. I had a Stone IPA that was a week after the Best By date and it still blew my mind. This was taken from a room temp top shelf too.

 

Fixed your post so it would blend better on the forums.

 

Hey, if freshness is your thing and you don't want to see the date- just cover your bottle with a brown bag!

 

Honestly, it totally depends on the style. I would not buy an IPA a day after its expiration date. That means it is likely six months old (some cool breweries like Stone and Ithaca do three months for their IPAs). Since many of us are lucky enough to have a variety of options for IPAs and pale ales, I don't see anything wrong with favoring the freshest.

Does it mean it has spoiled one day after it's "best buy?" Not necessarily. Am I a snob or unreasonable for not choosing to buy it? Absolutely not.

 

Ahh..Stone IPA. I gave it an even higher rating than Ruination.

To be fair, we don't know, do we?, when that IPA ended up on the room temp shelf. It *could* have been in the fridge before the store decided to shift it. That *could* explain why it was still awesome when you drank it.

 

Funny.

 

Most brewers that I know of put a 4 month window on their IPAs.

 

How so. After 2-3 days its turned to complete shit? Maybe "fresh" wasnt the best adjective.

Cheers!

 

It likely wasn't fresh on the "best buy" date is my point. Plus your statement ("A beer a couple days past what is fresh is still fresh") makes no sense/is logically untrue.

 

Would have been interesting to buy the 12 pack and a sixer, then had someone pour a can from each for you to compare blindly. Very possible you could distinguish them, but my guess is which one you thought was better would be a toss up. Not too bad for Oskar Blues, you still bought their beer!

 

I am currently drinking an IPA that is 7 weeks old, tastes great.
It definitely depends on the beer, I've had IPA's that were six months old that tasted as good as they did the day they were bottled and I've had IPA's 2 months old that were only a shell of their former self.
Kind of something you just learn along the way about which ones hold up better then others.

 

Please tell others about the freshness issue. We need more people speaking up about expired beer.

 

Most people can't. Everyone likes to think they have an exceptional palate but the fact is most people don't and the flavor differences are usually extremely subtle unless its been months.

 

I still have 2 bottles of Hopslam. I may not drink them 'til next month. ::grabs crotch, sticks out tongue::

 

I'm not exceptionally picky about the dates on hoppy beers but I certainly would like them to be fresh and vibrant tasting, not faded. Maybe it's because it's such a revered beer that I pay extra attention, but Heady Topper, for example, a beer I've had many times, seems noticeably less tasty and fresh within 3-4 weeks of canning. I have had the same experience with Pliny.

Am I hyper focused on the experience with these superior beers or is there that much more to lose as opposed to a run-of-the-mill IPA/DIPA? The latter would likely lack the subtlety and refinement of flavor that is so precious in the former so big deal if it's a little older.

 

You see, this is why BA is good! I wouldn't know the difference had I just been a beer store patron with my own insular experience of trying beers one at a time without any knowledge or expectation of what they might be like. This reminds me of a fellow I met the other day who had been drinking Stone brews for around ten years, and had branched out to several other breweries as well. He asked me about Port Wipeout IPA, and suggested that it must be different now because it tastes very "off." I asked him if he looks at freshness dates, and he said no. That's ten years of not being a BA, and drinking beers with dates, and he never noticed them.

 

I like clear, easy to read production dates, but I'm not a big fan of "best by" dates. Some breweries use 90 day codes, some 180 days, etc. Unless you know which breweries use which, it's still hard to make a fully informed purchase. I've had a customer reject a keg of Dortmunder Gold 2 weeks from it's BBD, making it about 2.5 months old, in favor of a keg of Scrimshaw that had a fill date that was 4 months old.

 

I am the same way now with hoppy beers. When I see really fresh IPAs, DIPA s, black IPAs, and hoppy red ales I purchase until they become 45 or 50 days old. No freshness dates, no purchase for me anymore. When you spend $12 on a four pack, it should be the way the Brewer intended it to be.

 

Many beer producers are reluctant to code their packages in an understandable way because of all the fresh beer sorters who buy beer the way they buy milk. This results in older (and overage) product on the shelves and in the dump.