Sit down with me if you will and imagine me as a bitter old octogenarian with eyebrows looking to jump through the TV screen and strangle you as I deliver one of my top beer pet peeves.
As readily apparent from my reviews, I fancy the hoppier side of ales - a good IPA or pale ale is truly a work of art, in my humble opinion - as I've grown in understanding the brewing process through education and hands-on experience with brewing my own beer, I have a greater appreciation for how much work and precision goes into these beers.
Now, some of the dynamics of the more extreme hoppy ales (like the Imperials) are that the yeast is kept live in bottle to deliver that fresh, crisp taste of fresh hops - this requires a low temp in order to keep that yeast cold enough to stay dormant and not continue to feed - adding some fun organic chemistry reactions that would bore the pants off most of you.
As a result of maintaining a fine product, brewers ask all their suppliers to refrigerate their wares upon receipt - some (like the fine folks at Russian River) REQUIRE all their suppliers to do so, others (like the fine folks at Moylan's) think it's obvious enough by the big red and white warning label saying "Live Beer - Keep Refrigerated" on the bottle.
So nothing pains my heart when I walk into a brewshop and see brews from the above referenced breweries or others that require refrigeration sitting on the rack, standing at room temperature. I actually called one guy out at my local place, showing him the Moylan's "keep refrigerated" label he had out on a non-refrigerated rack. His excuse was, "If I had my way, we'd have all these refrigerated!" As I looked past him at the three empty coolers on the wall, then back at him, then back at the coolers...Well, I don't want to take the chance at pissing this guy off, as he's my potential Pliny the Younger supplier so I'll leave it at that.
So to all those brew suppliers - those labels on those beers aren't just for show - sometimes, just sometimes, they contain pertinent information about their care. I'm Andy Rooney.
I don't know if you want this guy as your PtY supplier if he's just going to let it sit at room temp once he gets it...then again, I suppose you have to take what you can get sometimes :).
ReplyDeleteHaha - RRBC won't let him put RRBC beers on the shelves or he'll lose that account - and there's a long line I'm sure ready to pick that one up.
ReplyDeletetouche
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