Wow...that's some old beer in Vegas....

Yup, there certainly are a fair share of "aged" beers here on the shelves. That, and the fact that much of the beer is not refrigerated in this sometimes scorching hot climate makes for a bad combination.

Recently I was shopping around for some Firestone Pale 31. One store had some sitting on the shelves unrefrigerated and about 6 months old. Another store nearby had some refrigerated and dated a couple of weeks old. Easy to figure out which store got my business.

 

So does that mean there's a bunch of Deschutes, Firestone, Bruery, etc gems laying around?
Or do those get snatched up pretty quick/ their big beers aren't distributed out there?

 

If by "gems", you mean their more rare/big offerings then I wouldn't say a lot of them are laying around, but as of last week I saw Firestone Sucaba and Double DBA on the shelves. Normally though, the rarer and more hyped releases tend to sell fairly quickly.

 

I was there a little over a month ago, and Stone IRS from 2012 was easy to find (wish I had room to bring some back). I had a bomber of Black Xantus while I was there (hadn't seen it since the previous summer, when it came and went in a few days). I wanted to try Sculpin, but all the bombers I saw had best buy dates that were 3 months expired.

 

Recently I've noticed that a couple of stores here are selling bombers of Sculpin for $3.99. The only problem is that the best before date is right about now (end of April) and the bottles have been sitting warm on the shelf for a while. I bought one just for the heck of it, and while it wasn't bad by any means it was certainly past it's peak.

 

Used to hit up two or three Lee's on trips out there. Now just the WF at the end of the strip and Khoury's if I have time to make the drive to Henderson.

 

Thinks you went to the wrong store(s)

 

Agreed!

Lees is great for liquor for your hotel room but the beer storage conditions can be suspect!