American Craft Beer The Best Craft Beer, Breweries, Bars, Brewpubs, Beer Stores, And Restaurants Serving Serious Beer.
With more American breweries now online than ever before and retail shelves overflowing with beer options, shopping can be intimidating especially for those new to craft beer.
But there are a number of smart ways to ensure that the beer you’re leaving the store with is decent.
- Don’t just buy beer anywhere
If you’re new to craft beer, it always helps search out retail accounts that seem to know and care about craft beer…While some retail accounts and big box stores might afford you pricing, they sometimes don’t allow for the kind of floor staff with the time to help you make smart and interesting choices.
Every city has retail accounts that understand craft beer better than others…And an informed staff that appreciates beer can offer smart guidance, as well as an informed selection of beer options, which is now more important than ever with more than 7000 breweries now producing beer across the nation.
- Refrigerated beer tends to be better
As Kate Bernot writing for the Takeout accurately explained, “Temperature fluctuations and heat are the enemy of fresh-tasting beer; every brewery would prefer its beer be shipped, stored, and displayed cold.”
Plus beers that are in the cooler are beers that the retailer knows is popular. And in the world of craft beer popular beer’s become that way for a reason and usually it’s not because they suck.
- Choose cans over bottles if possible
It took us a while to come around to the advantages of canned beer over bottles. But aesthetics aside, we’re true believers now, because cans just afford beer a longer shelf-life.
Cans provide a more effective light and oxygen barrier – and as a result that they preserve the beer’s freshness and integrity longer.
Plus innovations over the last couple of years have led to cans that better showcase a beer’s taste and newly designed pouring lips that can accentuate its aromatics. Boston Beer’s Jim Koch, once a fierce opponent of canning, introduced his own redesigned “Sam Can”– and Sam Adam’s is now a leading participant in the movement.
- Fresh beer is the best beer, so look for date codes
Most craft beers nowadays come with some indication of when that beer was brewed. So inspect what you’re purchasing closely to ensure that the beer’s not too old.
Thirty days and you’re golden, sixty days you’re good, but after ninety days you’re looking at a beer that’s just less bright… especially with IPAs. And when you’re buying those hazy, New England style IPAs that ‘sell-by’ window can translate into mere weeks!
And if you’re shopping at a beer store where older beers proliferate rethink where you’re shopping. (See #1)
- Buy locally brewed beer
When it comes to craft beer it’s no longer size that matters…its proximity. Distance factors into how old the beer is when it finally reaches the retail shelf and that impact is only magnified if the beer travels in bottles. (See #3)
As good as Oregon-based Deschutes Brewery is, you’re gonna be better off drinking their beer in Bend, rather than in Washington, DC.
If you’re buying beer from a local brewery chances are good that it’s going to be fresher than a beer brewed halfway across the country.
And again if you’ve checked the beer’s ‘sell by’ date (See #4) and that local beer is more than ninety days old, you need to shop somewhere else. (See #1)
