Commentary: Things That Crush My Barley

Rant #1:  BEER RETAILERS NOT STORING IPAs IN COOLERS!

IPAs are delicious and distinct beers.  What makes them unique compared to other beer styles is their high hop character, balanced by a nice dose of sweet malt.  Without their aggressive hop flavor and aroma, you might as well call them pale ales.  IPAs, more so than other beer styles, are perishable products, just like milk, orange juice, lemonade, etc.  So my question is, why do most retailers leave them sitting on the shelf in room temperature?!  They wouldn't keep milk and other dairies in room temperature, so why would they think its satisfactory to not keep IPAs cold?  

In fact, there was a bottle of an organic IPA sitting on the shelf that I was looking over at Lee's Discount Liquor a couple days ago.  Right on the bottle it said, "This beer is perishable.  Keep refrigerated."  What part of that do the retailers not understand?  They are not like jars of peanut butter or jelly, where you can keep it at room temperature until the first time you open it and then have to stick it in the fridge afterwards.  IPAs must be kept cold at all times, even if they haven't been open.  I mean it says it right on the bottle and they still don't store them in the cooler!  The main reason they have to be stored cold is to keep the hops fresh.  The longer it sits in heat or room temperature, the faster the aroma and taste of the hops fade and eventually become undetectable, essentially turning it into a pale ale, or even causing them to spoil faster.  Don't get me wrong, there are a limited number of IPAs that sit in the front coolers, but instead of storing the extras in a back storage cooler or something, they just the throw the excess bottles on the shelf and sell them.  And sometimes this bigger question is: "How long have they been sitting there?"

The ones that really suffer because of most retailers' improper care and storage aren't just the consumers, but the brewers themselves.  These guys worked hard to craft great IPAs and make sure their hoppy beverages leave the brewery in peak condition, in both taste and aroma, only for them to be ruined by the distributors and retailers.  The problem is the average beer drinker doesn't know all the intricacies of IPAs.  So when they buy and drink a retailer-caused mediocre IPA with faded hops right off the shelf, they assume its the lack of talent from the brewer.  For example, "Oh man, this is a crappy IPA.  Its too sweet and not hoppy enough. This brewery sucks!"  It never enters their mind that it might be the fault of the distributer and/or retailer they bought it from.  If you don't believe me, go buy a local IPA from a store that is sitting on the shelf and try it.  Then go to that brewery and buy a bottle of the same beer and drink it.  I guarantee you 9 times out of 10 that it will taste completely different.  That's because they know how to take care of their beers.  Being a hophead and IPA-lover myself, I have drank subpar IPAs, despite them being fresh and handled/stored carefully.  I am not here saying that every IPA that tastes mediocre is the result of poor handling habits by retailers.  There are a bunch of average and sometimes even poor quality IPAs I have drank onsite of the breweries.  I'm not saying its a bad thing that the average drinker doesn't know or think about this, but it is not fair to the breweries that can actually does produce quality IPAs.  As a result, the good breweries lose customers, beer sales and profits, all because retailers don't bother to learn about the products they carry or even bother to read the care instructions on the bottles themselves.  It just really pisses me off!  Well, that's my rant for the day.