How long should an IPA be good for?

So I have the same issue probably 99% of you have, my friends have discovered I make good beer. When we game at my house, which happens every Sunday, the kegs get hit pretty hard.

With the new kiddo I don't get very much time to brew so I'm thinking of whipping up a 10 gallon batch of NB's Lakefront Fixed Gear Pro IPA/Amber Ale. I've made it before and it's one of my favs.

My plan is to put the IPA on the far tap and tell my friends that tap is off limits. By myself though it will probably take me several months to get through 10 gallons of IPA. I know that IPA's are best fresh, and unlike stouts, you don't really want to age them... Which finally brings me to my question:

How long will an IPA in a keg under pressure, stay good for?

Not exactly an answer to your original question, but why not get a smaller keg (i think they make 2.5 gallon ones) and use that as your personal stash?

Or, once it starts to fade turn your friends loose on it.

Rick

If it will stay good for say, 2 months-ish, I should be fine. It will actually be two 5 gallon kegs, only one will be hooked up to the tap, the other will just be hooked up to the Co2 only.

I made a pale ale, not an IPA, but a month after bottling it was great. 2 months later is was just OK. The aroma had faded considerably.

I've had hop flavor and aroma fade on me pretty quick sometimes. I think it depends on when and how you are adding it. Two months might be pushing it. One option would be to dry hop the second keg before carbing it up and drinking it. That would reintroduce some hop flavor and aroma to it.

RM-MN said:

I made a pale ale, not an IPA, but a month after bottling it was great. 2 months later is was just OK. The aroma had faded considerably.

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He is not talking about bottling, he is talking about kegging. They are two completely different things, I have found. IPAs that are bottled and stored at cellar temps (~50*F) are best for around a month after bottling, and then the quality declines rather quickly (this is just my experience). HOWEVER, IPAs that are kegged are a different story. If your keg of IPA is good and cold (40*F or less) and kept under CO2 pressure (not that air pump crap), then your beer should stay good for 2 months, easy. I have never had a keg of beer last a super long time, but I have heard of people's kegged beer still being great after 4 months. The only thing that might happen to your beer is that you may loose a bit of the hoppiness. It should still be tasty, though!

inhousebrew said:

I've had hop flavor and aroma fade on me pretty quick sometimes. I think it depends on when and how you are adding it. Two months might be pushing it. One option would be to dry hop the second keg before carbing it up and drinking it. That would reintroduce some hop flavor and aroma to it.

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People always say this, but you know, I've cracked bottled IPA's that were nearly 12 months old and they were STILL hoppy and beautiful. Remember an IPA was meant to be shipped on long journeys. They may loose SOME of the punch, but they're not going to become piss water.....

My kegged IPA was perfectly fine for the entire nearly 6 months it took me to drink my keg. It changed, but it more mellowed that lost anything. More like the flavors all came together. But it was still happily hoppy.

I recently made a fabulous APA. Dry hopped for 14 days, then bottle carbed. I found that the flavor fell off after about 6 weeks. The flavor cliff for this beer was caused from the dry hop aromas and flavors wearing off. When I drank this beer after 6 weeks, it still tasted like my other APAs that had not been dry hopped but just didn't have quite the pop it did before.

Revvy said:

People always say this, but you know, I've cracked bottled IPA's that were nearly 12 months old and they were STILL hoppy and beautiful. Remember an IPA was meant to be shipped on long journeys. They may loose SOME of the punch, but they're not going to become piss water.....

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I only said this because I very recently had my favorite beer ever turn to piss water. It was a galaxy pale ale with a crapton of Galaxy and Cascade at the end and then two ounces for a dryhop. It was terrific. Really hazy, but terrific. Then after awhile in the keg it became crystal clear and tasted like garbage. No hop flavor, no nothing. Could this be because of the heavy reliance on late additions and dryhopping?

Challenger440 said:

I recently made a fabulous APA. Dry hopped for 14 days, then bottle carbed. I found that the flavor fell off after about 6 weeks. The flavor cliff for this beer was caused from the dry hop aromas and flavors wearing off. When I drank this beer after 6 weeks, it still tasted like my other APAs that had not been dry hopped but just didn't have quite the pop it did before.

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This sounds like a similar experience to mine. I guess this thread is supposed to be about IPAs and we are both referencing APAs so maybe we are a bit off base here? Maybe not?