Crazy world. Several years ago, Bourbon Barrel Plead the 5th Stout was a really big release-only beer that I used to trade for with other very limited beers.
Now? It’s in cans at the local shop.
I don’t recall the “spicy hot chocolate” aspect before, but I definitely don’t mind it.
EDIT: I didn’t realize that this is a spicy hot chocolate variant - I thought I was buying the regular BBA stout. Jokes on them, because I really like this hot cinnamon style.
I think I made a bad decision tonight.
How many bottles from Belgium did you order?
I have an assload of Belgian beer in my basement, and I have to force myself to open them on random nights, as opposed to the IPA that I’ll just pop open unthinkingly.
I’ve had a 2013 Drie Fonteinen Hommage in the fridge for a while, and finally decided to open it. I remember being very excited to buy it - I think I paid $50 for the bottle and was thrilled to get the chance. But after I bought it, there were reports of it being infected or otherwise bad. A very common description was that it had a strong band-aid flavor.
Anyway, tonight I decided to open it. If it’s good, I get a delicious cherry/raspberry lambic. And if it’s bad, I toss it and who cares.
Just terrible. I opened it and it had a nice amount of pressure against the cork, and poured with a ton of carbonation. I initially got a good whiff of fruit, too. So I was very optimistic. But then I tasted it. Holy shit - just an overwhelming band-aid taste. I don’t know the chemical reactions that would lead to this, but there’s no other way to describe it. Super disappointing.
Here’s where the bad decision comes in. I decided to continue with another beer that’s been sitting in the fridge for a while - a 2018 bottle of Founders Canadian Breakfast Stout. This used to be a very rare and sought-after beer, but then Founders made an enormous amount and flooded the market.
Now, I was not looking to drink a lot tonight, and this is a 750ml bottle of a high ABV beer. Way more than I planned on drinking. But recently, the Breakfast Stout line of beers has (in my opinion) been pretty watered-down and unsatisfying. So I wasn’t very optimistic about this beer and figured I wouldn’t be drinking much of it.
Absolutely fantastic. Nice and thick, with no obvious decline from the 4 years it’s been in the bottle. So now I’m probably going to drink the whole damn thing and be super drunk and useless tonight and tomorrow.
Really need a Marie Kondo cleanup of my basement to prevent these kinds of shenanigans.
Sounds like a wonderful weekend to me!
You might as well go to the basement and pick a bottle for Easter brunch as well.
I don’t drink many IPAs anymore but I was driving through Sonoma county and stopped at Russian River so I could finally try Pliny the Elder. I like the hazy juice bombs but this is balanced so well and super drinkable, it screams IPA to me. Would make it a go to beer if I had access to it.
Talking about hazy juice bombs, tonight I had a can of a double IPA from equilibrium brewing (NY) in collaboration with urban south (NOLA) that was delicious.
I can’t keep track of how many breweries are making great beers anymore. It’s problem.
On the plus side, there’s basically no reason to ever have a bad beer again.
Only reason you might is if you take a chance on an unknown.
Yeah, but my problem is that there’s like 4 or 6 different beers that I’d like to keep in the fridge at all times plus 4 or more that I want to try and there’s only some much beer I can drink every night.
Not to mention that these 4 packs are all on the $16-20 range nowadays. Thanks, Biden!
I have learned from the chronicles of @spidercrab that there is always a risk and the only way to avoid it is to be willing to just pour them down the drain if they’re no good.
Yeah, this is exactly the strength of Pliny. It’s not too much of anything, everything in balance, as it was meant to be. MrsWookie does not merely tolerate it but actually enjoys it, despite refusing all other IPAs.
I am fascinated by the fact that I can walk into a grocery store and see an enormous row of ostensibly high-quality beer, but then look closely and see that ~all of it is 4 months old or 6 months old or even older. This makes absolutely no sense to me - who is walking into Whole Foods and picking up a 6-pack of, say, Sculpin that was canned last August? Does Whole Foods just not buy Sculpin (or whatever) for months at a time? Does Whole Foods have a right to return it to the wholesaler? How does Ballast Point (maker of Sculpin) plan their production if their beer is just sitting on shelves for months at a time?
If I ever bump into a beer buyer/seller at a social event, I am going to grill them about this for hours, and they’re going to be miserable.
At least 90% of buyers just grab the six pack and check out. I don’t remember ever checking the date on a beer.
I think it depends on the type of beer. IPAs are supposed to be better fresh, I get that. But I am not sure if I could really tell the difference between a 6 month Scuplin and a 3 month Sculpin and a new born Sculpin. Stone makes a whole series of “Drink By” beers with the date right in the title, that’s handy.
Some other kinds of beer taste better or at least different with age.
I’m usually not buying an IPA that was canned/bottled more than 2 months earlier.
If I’m buying a shelf ipa at a store I 100% check the canned date. I don’t bother on any other styles though.
I am fascinated by the carbon footprint of the logistics you’re imagining here.
It would probably be really bad!
But I’m trying to imagine something similar happening with a more obviously time-sensitive item like, say, yogurt. I go to the store and am excited to see endless varieties of yogurt - many brands and many permutations. But when I look more closely, I see that it’s the same population of expired yogurt that was sitting on the shelf last month. Instead of throwing away the obviously-bad yogurt, the store is just keeping it with the faint hope that some poor soul buys it?
And Chobani or whoever is like "Wow, our sales were so great last year when Kroger bought 500 pallets of coconut yogurt, but they haven’t bought any in months. Guess there’s nothing we can do about it except shut down production until they all sell through. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ "*** That seems crazy to me.
***I don’t know how yogurt sales are measured.
well, 1) expiration dates in general are baloney and don’t indicate when something goes “bad” and 2) in today’s supply-chain nightmare, stores are probably doing things a lot differently than they did before.
In the past, most reputable stores would throw “expired” product away. Nowadays it wouldn’t surprise me if they’re keeping some stuff out there beyond the sell-by date to avoid having a bunch of bare shelves etc.
Supermarket coffee is stale before it even arrives at the store. Like months before it arrives in some cases. Even stranger is that the supermarket coffee clientele predominantly drinks pre-ground dark roasts which stale incredibly quickly, like maybe within a day or two of being processed.
