I don’t ignore glass ware suggestions/recommendations. Although it is telling that they are called recommendations. For one, certain glasses release aromas and qualities certain ways and that is always a static characteristic. A glass always acts the same no matter how old the glass is. Beer is not that way. It is an organic product that changes over time and evolves into (many times) something better; thus, it is dynamic.
The truth is that there are two preferences that you are using in your argument. One, you have a preference for Stone and Russian River over Bud (I think that this is correct). However, your preference to listen to a more respectable brewer over another is just that; preferential. The respect that you hold in that regard dictates the credence that you give to what they said.
Second, there is the preference of the people making the beer. It is simply preference. To me, it seems a bit like saying, if you want to drink the product as best we intended it, then drink it fresh. But to preclude cellaring it on that basis is to put intent into some irrevocable law for the beer. The verbiage and matter-of-factness behind the statement was my problem. Who knows what a cellared version might taste like…they never will. The only point I was trying to get across is that preference is exactly that, let’s not make it a dictum.

I want to be perfectly clear that I almost always buy a nicer beer to try and one of the same to cellar. There is a lot to miss out on if one doesn’t do this. All that to say that I actually do take the suggestion in one very real sense. Let me also state something that I think will clarify what I think drives my attitude toward this. IPAs as an historic style (this is why I posted the linke) were actually meant to lengthen the life of the beer for shipping, not hop it up for the flavor. But intent changed over time. Now, why isn’t Russian River or Stone sticking to that historical intent? Again, I can’t help but see preference at work here. If we really wanted to be contentious about it we could appeal to the idea that British Brewers know more about the style, so that should dictate our rendering of IPA. We don’t do that…and I’m glad. It is iconoclasm that created Pliny the Elder. It’s ok if we participate in it, too. Isn’t it?

I saw that “Notice” on the Stone 13th Anniversary bottle and wrote that in my review of the beer. I would age the beer, just because it says not to, but quite frankly there wasn’t much I liked about the beer to have it take up shelf space…