Fresh hombrew vs. purchased beer

I just spent 9 dollars on a bottle of Imperial IPA (Not trying to bash any specific brewery because all are equally responsible). Start drinking and it is oxidized. This is why I love homebrew because if it is too old it is my own fault for not drinking it fast enough. I would much rather spend the 9 dollars toward brewing some homebrew than gamble on buying an expensive bottle and having it be terrible.

how would it oxidize over time? confused...was the cap on tight?

joel4482 said:

I just spent 9 dollars on a bottle of Imperial IPA (Not trying to bash any specific brewery because all are equally responsible). Start drinking and it is oxidized. This is why I love homebrew because if it is too old it is my own fault for not drinking it fast enough. I would much rather spend the 9 dollars toward brewing some homebrew than gamble on buying an expensive bottle and having it be terrible.

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So you have an extremley refined palette, or you are perceiving another off-flavor in the beer as oxidation, or something else is aloof.

I would say that most commercial breweries go above and beyond to reduce spoilage, and customer dissatisfaction, one of the reasons they put a born on, or freshness date on their bottles.

Some beers such as frambois, and other lambics, are aged for years sometimes before bottling, others while in the bottle.

Low ABV beers are meant o be drank while they are young, and most brewres know this, while big beers must be aged for long periods of time. So I think oxidation, especially when coming from a commercial/ micro/ larger brewery do their best to reduce trivial problems such as oxidation.

Not sayin you ain't correct, just sayin it is unlikely. EDIT: Regardless of where you are employed

Cheers!

mcaple1 said:

how would it oxidize over time? confused...was the cap on tight?

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It was a cork and tight as hell. All beer oxidizes over time. I have become a little more sensitive to oxidation since I work at a brewery and have to taste oxidized beer on a weekly basis. Stronger/unfiltered beers generally age better because most have a little yeast still in them to eat up some oxygen. The cause of my beer was most likely being old.

Review revised post.

I find a lot of IPA i purchase bottled are terribly skunked.

Its really due to the storage conditions and handling at the store you buy from. I go and pick out singles at the local Total Wine & More store. Unfortunately, you never know how long a bottle has been sitting on the shelve. I find that the IPA's I get there are hit and miss on freshness. Im sure this is just due to the time the beers sit on the shelves at 70 degrees with some light getting in.

mcaple1 said:

how would it oxidize over time? confused...was the cap on tight?

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Oxidation does not require molecular oxygen in the package, it just requires oxidized particles that can give up their oxygen, and all beers have these. At that point there are multiple pathways via which trans-2-nonenal or other flavor negative compounds can form. See, eg, Principles of Brewing Science (Fix).

It's not at all rare to buy a commercial beer off the shelf that is displaying oxidation. It is very common to drink homebrew that does.

That said, it's pretty easy to buy fresh commercial beer. Caveat Emptor.

I have started not buying IPAs at the store for this particular reason, especially if it is not totally clear/obvious when the beer was brewed. The hop flavor and aroma is noticibly different between fresh beer and one thats been sitting on the shelf for a few months.

9 bucks could get you close to a pound of hops. Then brew your own double IPA!

my Rye IPA has been in bottles for several months, and it tastes better every time I drink it. but my home brews are stored at 55F in the dark.

ReefkprZ said:

my Rye IPA has been in bottles for several months, and it tastes better every time I drink it. but my home brews are stored at 55F in the dark.

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That makes all the difference, I do believe. I wouldnt want to keep pepperoni on some of the storage and shelving displays at my local beer stores, let alone beer that I am paying 8-9 bucks a bottle for.

kpr121 said:

I have started not buying IPAs at the store for this particular reason, especially if it is not totally clear/obvious when the beer was brewed. The hop flavor and aroma is noticibly different between fresh beer and one thats been sitting on the shelf for a few months.

9 bucks could get you close to a pound of hops. Then brew your own double IPA!

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+ 1 to this and what Brettwasbtd said.

I think it's all storage conditions and how old it is. For hoppy beers I check the bottle for a bottled date. If it doesn't have one, then I don't buy it. If the date is more than a month ago, I don't buy it. IPA's are not bought by me often because of this. A fresh homebrewed IPA is the best one you can get.

However, this all depends on the liquor store too, some of them have better purchasers and keep stock rotating quick.

every beer i have (save for one - mild blonde) has gotten better after time in the bottle... frankly i'm at the point where i'm just going to wait a month after bottling to even sample them, but i'm not that patient. the sweet spot appears to be two months for most average gravity brews.

jtakacs said:

every beer i have (save for one - mild blonde) has gotten better after time in the bottle... frankly i'm at the point where i'm just going to wait a month after bottling to even sample them, but i'm not that patient. the sweet spot appears to be two months for most average gravity brews.

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Commercial breweries do not suffer the same downfalls that we as homebrewers have to deal with. They have perfect ferm temps, perfect pitching rates, high quality consistent ingredients, the advantage of large ( and sometimes under pressure) batch fermentation and conditioning, etc etc.

A commercial brewery can have a fully fermented, conditioned, carbed and cleared beer in less than 3 weeks sometimes. For an IPA, that very first day after conditioning is completed is the best hop flavor and aroma you will get, combined with a well conditioned brew. From there, the hop quality simply diminishes.

In a homebrew situation, it frequently takes a multiple weeks for all the off flavors to go away. These off flavors are brought on from fermentation temps, pitching rates, ingredients, etc etc that we simply do not always control perfectly. So day 21 for the commercial brewery may be equal to day 56 or 63 at the homebrew level. We have the advantage of being able to dry-hop at any point along that timeline to bring the hops back to the forefront (as long as you havent bottled yet!).

There are homebrewers that have their process down to a science where they have excellent beer at that 3 week mark, but it takes a lot of work to get there. I am NOT one of those brewers, but my IPAs are frequently drinkable (and delicious with all that hop flavor and aroma!) at 3-4 weeks.

I don't know about you, but I buy (and brew) IPA's for the hops. And when I am paying a premium for beer, I want it to be at its peak.

Well, its my own fault, but I tried bellhaven last night and it was skunked

I should have known that a clear bottle placed in the front row of a shelf of singles for who knows how long could be skunked. Oh well! I think i could tell what the beer should have tasted like. I made a pretty good 80/- and wanted to try a commercial example to see how i stacked up. I will have to look at other mediums for seeing how good my beer meets a style...entered it in a competition last night!

Next time, choose the bottle behind it lol

first off I would never buy a IIPA that is more than 2 months old if at all possible especially if I am paying 9 for it.

jtakacs said:

every beer i have (save for one - mild blonde) has gotten better after time in the bottle... frankly i'm at the point where i'm just going to wait a month after bottling to even sample them, but i'm not that patient. the sweet spot appears to be two months for most average gravity brews.

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Hi Jay.

Scrot

I have had very similar experiences as op. I would buy single bottles at the store (all kinds) and most all of them have the same awful taste. In fact its so bad I couldn't drink them. The last time I spent 45$ on a variety of commercial brews and only one pint tasted good. Last time ill ever shop there.

Yeah, my buddies and I used to go to our liquor store and buy 8 or 9 different beers to try...We would be lucky if 2 or 3 were good. As soon as we stopped buying IPA's and IIPA's our rate of good purchases went way up. You have to be at the liquor store at the right time to get them when they are freshest.

we are fortunate here there is a very local (7 blocks from my house) beer store that has over 100 different beers and iot ssuch a popular spot to buy beer the stock is pretty much always fresh on the popular micros.

some of the others the rares and collectible beers (some from 2004 and such) definitely sit there longer some of the beers are well over 15$ for a 12 oz. its scary to see a 17.99 12 oz bottle. some of them are fun to try though. some are definitely not worth the pricetag.

Bells has a batch lookup tool so you can use your mobile device to see when it was bottled. And they are phasing in a new labeling machine that records the bottle date right on the bottle, so you know exactly when it was bottled, no internet required. If they all did that, you could know you were getting a fresh beer.

A friend of mine bought me a Saison Dupont for my 22nd birthday and it tasted terrible. I just figured I didn't like the style. I finally decided to try a Saison from a local brewhouse recently and loved it. The Dupont I had was in a green bottle and who knows how long it was on the shelf. I'll have to try a fresher one someday.

Yeah, sometimes you gotta give a beer multiple chances due to this issue. Then again...the first sixer of Hop Devil I bought was amazing. 2nd and 3rd sixer were nothing compared to it. So I have stopped buying it. Guess I got lucky on the first sixer of it.

During my introduction to craft beer I used to scour the clearance and discount section cause I'm a cheap SOB...I eventually learned why they were clearance lol. I'm very picky about them now. Beer on clearance is almost never good.

brettwasbtd said:

Its really due to the storage conditions and handling at the store you buy from. I go and pick out singles at the local Total Wine & More store. Unfortunately, you never know how long a bottle has been sitting on the shelve. I find that the IPA's I get there are hit and miss on freshness. Im sure this is just due to the time the beers sit on the shelves at 70 degrees with some light getting in.

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i would agree with this. there was a certain bowling alley that i used to go to with cheap commercial beer prices, i don;t think they even had anything on tap. everytime we'd go there the Shiner Bock's tasted like they had ash in them or something. you could see the cases of the unchilled beers sitting on floor in a closet next to the kitchen. we concluded they must be getting warm or stored somewhere else that was causing them to get off flavors.

something else i've been noticing in grocery stores (i frequent more than one), gas stations, corner stores, just about everywhere - is that due to the economy they are really trying to stretch their inventory and sell what is on the shelves before they restock. i bought a 22oz Fischer ale a few weeks ago and the rubber seal on the swing-top was dry and hard it was so old and the beer had almost no head. the next week i checked again and there weer only 3 left and all had the same old rubber washer.
stores have been putting stuff on sale just to get it off the shelf before they restock.

jtakacs said:

every beer i have (save for one - mild blonde) has gotten better after time in the bottle... frankly i'm at the point where i'm just going to wait a month after bottling to even sample them, but i'm not that patient. the sweet spot appears to be two months for most average gravity brews.

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It seems that all my beers start to peak after 6 weeks. 3 weeks in primary, 2 weeks sugar carbing in keg and 1+ week in the kegerator.

I believe Oxidation does not refer to the atom oxygen, itself. It refers to changing an atom's/molecule's oxidation state, where Reduction refers to gaining an electron.
Reduction: Reduces Positive Charge ie gaining an electron
Oxidation: Gaining a charge, ie losing an electron

The molecular oxygen, or O2, is simply a catalyst for the RED-OX reactions because of its high electronegativity, or simply put, its inherent chemical property to attract electrons.

This guy knows his stuff and explains oxidation very well.
http://www.professorbeer.com/articles/oxidative_staling_beer.html

-Jefe-