The only time I have used hop extract were at annual Club brews at a local brewery, where we wanted easy and identical batches to compare single hop flavoring/late hop/whirlpool and dry hop additions which differed from brewer to brewer as the "only" variable (using the brewery's wort and house yeast by all of us). Different fermenting temperatures may have occurred, but it was in the spring, so we were all fermenting in our basements at reasonably similar temperatures. It was really interesting to compare the hops this way. I don't think I would use up a syringe of the hop extract we had before it would expire in terms of best use date.
By the way, the consensus favorite hop for flavor for our APA was Southern Cross (Mittlefruh and a couple other similar hops were up there, though).