I went to Vons today and they had a s-load of "craft" beer bombers on clearance. I picked up the following for $38 including tax:
Green Flash Citra Session IPA x2
Rogue Nut Brown (Love nut brown's and Rogue's is decent but not great) x2
Sam Adams Tetravis
Sam Adams New World Tripel
Firestone Opal Saison
Karl Strauss Tower 10 IPA
I also bought these not on the clearance rack:
Anderson Valley Brother David's Triple Abbey Style
Cali Creamin Cream Ale (I really like this stuff)
The Bruery Saison Rue
So far all I've tried are the Citra Session and the Opal. I wasn't a fan of either to be honest. Not bad by any means but nothing noteworthy. The Opal was actually kind of refreshing after having just run a half marathon a few hour prior but I thought it kind of lacked flavor. Just a mild hopiness.
Haven't had the citra session, but to be fair to it... Clearance rack IPA wont be at its best... No doubt its months old and possibly stored warm
At least the Green Flash should have a bottled on date at the bottom of the bottle somewhere below the label.
IMO getting towards 3 months and on the hops fade enough to really change the experience, sometimes shifting balance among the hop flavors, not just between the hops and the malt. Beers that are a little more golden and use crystal malts especially change a bit more with age as the malts start to come through more. Sometimes beers with just pale malts will just taste weaker.
2 months never seems quite as good, but is generally still representative, IMO.
http://freshbeeronly.com/ is a pretty good resource if you have not seen it...
(sorry if this comes off on lecturing on stuff you already know, or overly beer snobby)
With the recent heat wave I decided to pick up a four pack of this this weekend.
hahahaha.
Always a good one though, and reasonable price.