When you walk into your local beer or grocery store, the fluorescent lights highlight the many rows of bottles. After 40 years after the post-prohibition adventurers such as the Anchor brewery, Ballast Point, New Albion then the second generation of Sierra Nevada and Samuel Adams; the choices of beers are the highest it has ever been. In the articles I've written and the beers I've checked in, the United States is awash in craft beer. To overcome the paralysis of analysis is a Herculean feat. If you're like me, you check your Untappd app for things you haven't tried before. However, the abundance of choice has its detriment.
The ale Americans have come to love in the craft beer age is the India Pale Ale. The style's beginnings are quite interesting. According to many sources, there was a London exporter who was shipping beers that would take 6 months to be shipped to the British abroad in the far east of India. Some people were complaining about the hoppiness of the beer, so another brewer added more hops to their recipe, giving it the taste of freshness. Typically, India pale ales pack a punch, with 6 to 7.5% alcohol by volume. The malt profile is light, a pale to deep amber color. However, IPAs are known for its hops. My friend, those hops. The hoppiness of the beer is measured in International Bitterness Units (IBUs) and the American India Pale Ales can vary from 65 IBUs and higher. I've tapped out at 95 IBU without making that whiskey face. Needless to say, this beer is made to take a punch then give a punch. It's made to travel.
Have you ever seen something in a 7-Eleven, bodega or mini-mart and known, beyond a shadow of a doubt that something has been on the shelf longer than it has. I have been there before, hell a couple of times and I've bought plenty of beer there. I've been hurt before. Those same beers that are renown for maintaining their freshness cannot stand the test of time. How can a beer that is made to be shipped over half of the Earth go skunky in a cooler? A better question is, how can something be made locally suffer an even greater fate?
The rule of thumb is that a beer can last 8 to 12 months, if refrigerated and kept from direct light. Beers in brown bottles reflect light at a better rate than those beers in a clear or green bottle. American India Pale ales are a year-long offering, fresh-hopped beers are typically available after the hop harvest in late August and September. If you live in the Pacific Northwest, you can expect a Fresh Hop festival in October. I think it's something that the hop growers of Western New York should embrace. A fresh-hopped beer should be a beer enjoyed before breaking out the Oktoberfest and Marzen beers. The final breath of summer.
Again, I pose the question, how can such a hearty beer become so skunky? Start the clock after the bottling process where a beer can sit in a factory's store room waiting to be bought from a distributor. It then becomes the distributor's job to sell this beer to the stores. Once bought by the stores, then it is up to you, the consumer to buy said product. Normally, this process doesn't take 8 months - it should be an in-and-out process. However, we live in an interesting time. A time of ultimate choice.
Everyone has heard the story of a grandmother from Russia who came to an American supermarket and dropped to her knees, succumbed to the sheer amount of choice compared her Soviet stores of the past. I've experienced that in my lifetime. I remember a time where my mom would go to Consumer Beverage and loaded up on beer balls or cases of the American adjust lagers that our grandparents and parents grew up on. From famine to feast.
I'm not asking for fewer choices, however, I need to remember that if there is a beer I've never had before was bought ages ago. Taking the beer I couldn't finish today into consideration, the brewer intended that beer to be consumed in the summertime. Founders make a year-round session IPA and my fault is that I assumed. That papery and stale taste is from the oxidation of malt component and increases as the beer get older. Now with the choices, we have available, the onus for quality control lies with us all. Some breweries have a "brewed on" date which is helpful to the consumer because we can know how old our potential beer is. The responsibility also lies with the distributor and merchants. If merchants hold themselves to a higher standard and only sell the freshest product, distributors will make price corrections to get rid of excess product before it goes bad. Supermarkets need better buyers. Some of the larger chains will buy larger quantities thinking that people will enjoy the variety but if people buy a bad brew, how apt are they to buy beer there again? I know that I am hesitant buying beer from Whole Foods.
Quality control is all of our responsibilities.
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