How Long Does Finished, Bottled Beer Last?

Right at the outset, I know this is one of "those questions." That is, I understand there is no universal answer. Barley wines can go years, even decades in some cases, while IPAs are best consumed young. What I'm wondering, though, is if there are any general, round-about time limits for the differing varieties.

For example, the average IPA will last X number of months from bottling without losing flavor or aroma if stored under X conditions. The average stout will last X number of.......etc etc etc.

This information may very well be common knowledge, but for a newbie like me I had a kind of duh moment when I looked at my brew schedule for the coming weeks, and started wondering whether or not I could finish it all before it went bad, even with the help of friends, family, etc.

I have darker beers that got way better with age. Some of them were over 8 months old. Generally speaking the darker a beer is and the more alcohol it has the longer it will last. Most lighter all malt beers will last up to 4 months without any change in flavor. Heavy late hopped beer will always loose hop taste month by month. The bitterness fades as well. The beer is still very drinkable in spite of the loss of bitterness and hop flavor. Real light beer is the first to become less drinkable as there is nothing to hide it's very light flavors from becoming muddied.

683,654,324,325,365 years. A lot huh, well, you'll never be able to keep from drinking it for that long, so it doesn'r matter. Or lister to WBC because I'm,a a little druck.

For the IPAs, ESBs, and other hoppy beers, is it best to get them in cold storage as soon as they're ready? In other words, will the fridge preserve the hoppiness longer?

In general, for all styles, is the fridge the best place for them once they've sufficiently bottle conditioned? Or can you get away with keeping them out provided your temps are reasonable? I ask because I'm certainly not going to have enough room in the fridge for all these brews..will have to prioritize.

The question that your asking is to big to answer. This is, as you said "one of those questions", but I think we could probably come up with some sort of a table for some basics. Factor in best case with cold storage, no temp flux, no lights, and the best batch youve ever made, add in alcohol content, and your idea of whats still good to drink and then mabey we could try to come up with something like a table or a graph.

Pelikan - You knew you where opening a can of worms and I need to see what develops from it.
I am still learning to never drink a beer before its time, and they never last beyond their time.

About half the brews from one of my batches come out thin and "old" smelling, while the other half is decent to delicious. This batch is getting pretty old - nearly 8 months - and not very dark. Is it possible some of my beer is going bad? Or, is this an effect of my brewing process? A couple of my noob errors that I'm still correcting:

- not mixing priming sugar as well as I probably should (this batch wasn't put into solution, only measured into the bottling bucket and then lightly swirled)

- oxidizing the beer? (see above, lightly swirling during bottling)

- possible problems with my bottles. I clean them in a dishwasher and then soak in star-san. I see many posts about dishwashers being bad, but not much reasoning behind it (head loss? does that harm flavors?)

Did I just not drink them fast enough?

Run the bottles in the washer again with no soap and it should rinse everything, if it gets hot enough it can also sanitize them.
I think the real issue is the mixing of the bottling sugar. I put in the sugar water before I rack, the racking will mix up the sugar well enough to get nice even carbonation.