Keeping it fresh.

Most beer is made to enjoy right now, especially popular craft styles. How the brewers communicate this to beer lovers is another matter.

We recently looked at the meteoric rise of New England style IPAs; beers that, by their design, need consuming as soon as possible. They represent an extreme, but most beers benefit from being consumed fresh. In attempting to get this message across, brewers have conceived innovative methods. WA’s Feral and Sydney’s Akasha make plenty of noise around the launch of their imperial IPAs (Tusk and Korben D), transporting cold kegs to venues and insisting they tap them the day they’re received. Big

Shed’s owners once drove non-stop from their brewery in Adelaide to Sydney bar

Bitter Phew with a keg as soon as it had been filled, filming the journey to raise awareness of ‘fresh is best’.

With such beers – highly hopped

IPAs or, indeed, any hop-forward beer – even if they’re treated well and refrigerated from brewery to retailer to consumer, they’ll still change over time.

Hence the approach taken by Torquay brewery Blackman’s for their double IPA Angry Reginald release earlier this year. Down the side of the can was a humorous – and expletiveladen – guide. Based around the phrase “Fresh as f#$%”, it outlined when the beer would be at its best and how it should present every few months, signed off with an instruction that, should you find one 12 months old, don’t bother (but not necessarily in those words). “You hear about people who want to keep double IPAs for a year and think they’re great,” says the brewery’s Renn Blackman. “But [at that age] it’s not what a double IPA should be. Beers, especially hoppy pales and IPAs, are the best expression of how the brewer intended them to be when fresh. With Angry Reg, there’s so much hops added, it will change even over a couple of months, and when there’s a bit of malt in there too, the sweetness starts to really come through.”

Renn says the freshness message is always central to their interactions, particularly with retailers. “If we find old stock, we just swap it over and drink [the old beer] at home,” he says. “It’s good QC for me and my brewer.”

For Byron Bay’s Fixation Brewing Co., getting beer into customers’ hands fresh is as much of a focus as ensuring their IPAs (they brew nothing else) are well made. A Champion Brewery trophy at the

Craft Beer Awards last year suggests they’re on the right track, while the opening of a brewpub in Melbourne this winter will give drinkers a chance to sample straight from the tank.

With bottles and cans now distributed nationwide, the beers often pass through many hands before reaching a glass. “Our motto is ‘Life is short, drink fresh’, so our strategy has always been to look after the beer,” says Fixation’s Tom Delmont. “We store cold and transport cold and, where possible, deliver cold. There are challenges and it can create headaches and more work, but we know it’s better for the beer and ensures the majority of people get it in better condition than they otherwise would.”

Tom says that while some beers can be thought of like a cabernet sauvignon and cellared – typically darker, stronger beers like big stouts or Belgian ales – it’s not the case for many popular craft beer styles. “These delicate hop oils and aromas can oxidise so quickly, even with the best packaging line,” he says.

It’s around packaging where other challenges strike for brewers keen to educate about freshness: namely, the vagaries around date stamping. There is no requirement for brewers to stamp individual cans or bottles and, in the absence of an industry standard, those that do can choose to use a packaged on, best before or best after date – or a combination.

Fixation started out with a three-month best before, then extended it when national distribution began, and has introduced packaged-on dates too. That’s the Blackman’s approach and one increasingly used by brewers who favour hop-forward beers, including Sydney’s Modus Operandi, which released a video on the topic. Others have had fun with it: the first run of cans for 3 Ravens’ Juicy IPA featured a best before of “NOW”.

Unless you’re embedded in the beer world, the diverse approaches can cause confusion. A simple rule should help. Rather than thinking of beer as beer, think of it as milk. When you’re buying milk, how often do you rummage around for the carton with the longest bestbefore date? You might get the odd funny look as you hold up beer after beer to the light, squinting for a date stamp, but your tastebuds will thank you.