Canning Early

[BiggieSmalls]

I apologize if this has been said before but I searched and couldn’t find it.

Two Firestone Invitationals ago, Henry from Monkish had said during a panel interview that he cans his IPA’s a week early on the presumption that his beer will be traded and shipped before consumption. He said 70% of his beer is consumed by the secondary market.

More Betterness (MB) and I have discussed this ever since. I think it is wrong to release a product that you know is not ready to be drank based off of the secondary market. MB thinks it is ok to release your product early if you know that 70% of your product is being consumed a week or two later.

What do you guys think?

 

[Marksy]

 

[tylerk88]

I think it’s the brewery’s responsibility to communicate to the customer either a) drink fresh! or b) best in 1 week. I generally view beer the way that I view produce, for example— that is, it’s a local commodity meant to serve a local market.

I think that it’s super interesting though that Monkish sees his customers as distributors, in a sense.

 

[primebeer]

(Obligatory) I’m not a brewer, but this seems weird at best and bad for the beer at worst. So he’s canning beer a week early and releasing it when it would otherwise be conditioning in a tank at a stable temperature in a controlled environment? I feel like you’d be doing an active disservice to your beer by doing this, as all of the changes like DO/TPO additions, temperature fluctuation, and other things I don’t know or understand can’t possibly yield an equivalent product.

Any commercial brewers have some insight? GMRfx?

 

[GMRfx]

I'm confused. What's a week early? Would he otherwise have the beer sit in a brite for a week until it's at it's optimal drinking point? We would never have that amount of tank time available. He's packaging "finished", carbonated beer. Just perhaps not finished beer at it's optimal drinking point, yes?

For us, beer is fermented, yeast dropped/collected, dry hopped twice, and then crashed to 32 over several temperature drops. For hoppy beers, this is a 15 day schedule from grain to transfer to brite (sometimes an extra day at 32 or two due to weekends, etc). The beer is then moved to a brite, and carbonated via a carb stone. The beer is in the brite often for just a day, and sometimes two - but usually not longer. Just until any solids/particulates have time to settle out and the results pass QC.

I do often feel beer is a bit green at packaging (we don't release canned hoppy beers in house day of packaging, they get a day in the cooler), but it's not an option to hold beer in a brite tank until it's at an optimal point in it's life. I feel most hoppy beer is packaged a bit green, and gets better a week or two later - melding/softening/however you might quantify it via sensory. Most busy breweries just don't have tank space to have finished beer sit any longer. I don't feel that this changes the risks of post packaging stress/abuse if your SOPs are sound.

I'm guessing his beers are released "early" because he doesn't have the tank space to hold them until they are at what he personally considers optimal drinking condition, and he uses the "people trade them, and don't drink them right away" as a spin for his process (which in my experience, is the standard process for the styles he's talking about).

 

[agrippin]

Henry goes into a lot of detail on his IPAs in this: https://beerandbrewing.com/podcast-episode-29-monkish/

Doesn't say anything about packaging early. In fact it's the opposite.