Refusing to buy beer that doesn't have a bottling date?

Freshness concerns provides more reason to support our local, independent bottle shops. Higher customer count enables a rotating stock of fresh product. When we don't support the little guys and shop at the chains we force mom and pop to retain old stock. They are then less likely to add variation to their assortment and instead cater to the walk in Bud customer who just wants a cheap buzz.

 

Well, yeah... thus all the old beer on the shelves, and the constant tales of retailers being told the out of code beer is "still good", having distributors refuse to take back and credit/replace old beer, even delivering beer out of code in some cases. If the brewery was eating the cost, why would the distributor NOT pull the old stock?

Again, it will depend on the contract between the brewery and distributor (and possibly state law), but the industry standard is the distributor is responsible for monitoring and maintaining fresh beer on the shelves. Here's how it was put in a brewery-distributor lawsuit:

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Even in some of the well-reported Koch/BBC "old beer buy back" programs, the benefit to the wholesaler is that the cost is split 50/50 with BBC.

Again, though, in your case Stone itself is the distributor of their and other brewers' beers in South California.

 

I only buy undated bottles from a retailer I know turns over his stock.

 

But that assumes the retailer's distributors are doing the same thing and are never delivering beer that has been sitting unsold in the warehouse for months. For instance, a new chain liquor store by me opened in late October and is stocked with some beer dated "Best by" July, 2012. I won't trust any undated beer in that (or any other) store simply because the place opened in October or the beer "just came in".

 

Nah, I don't worry about dates - I shop the same few shops, so I know what's been there for a while and the guys there know how to run their stores - stuff that oughtta be fresh is fresh. Sometimes I'm curious about dates for beers that have "store-aged" for a while, but I don't know exactly when they were bottled, but these are beers that age well. Freshness is never an issue or a concern. The turn-over on "drink fresh" kinda beers is always good, as far as I can tell.

 

In PA, where most beer is accessible via case only, I've held off on spending $70 on Sculpin cases because it's not printed on the box. Too much cash for a crapshoot.

 

Surprised they won't let you open it to see. It's in cans now too.

 

When I first was getting into craft I drank anything and everything off the shelf unknowingly buying old IPA's, DIPA's and other non-descript "expired" beers. With years going-by and my knowledge slowly expanding I have since stopped buying those without a bottling date and prefer IPA's and DIPA's on tap. About the only time I buy them from the store now is if I know it is a recent release like Three Floyd's "Rye Da Tiger", Bell's "Hopslam", etc.

 

I love when I pull an IPA off the singles shelf at BevMo. Usually there's a pretty big yeast/hop particulate sludge on the bottom of the bottle. I always see if there is some unassuming customer around and expound/rant on the virtues of fresh beer and decry those those bastards who would have us drink drek. If someone who didn't understand the finer points of beer drank that old ass bottle, they would think the BEER sucks. This is not acceptable.

 

That's true ,but I haven't been burnt yet. I buy most of my beer at small local shops and should have said trusted retailer.

 

For the most part I only buy beer with no dates if it's local to me. I look at it this way, Would you buy milk with no date??

 

Ordered a Racer 5 in a newly opened bar on Friday night. Asked the staff if they knew how fresh it was. Cue confused/annoyed expression-"we've only been open a couple of weeks?".

To be fair they did try to find the bottling date once I explained it to them but it was too dark to see anything.

Beer was stale of course.

 

To hell with the retail stores that leave expired beers on the shelf as well!!

One store near me has bottles of Ruination that are 11 months past expiration. I asked the employee about them and he shrugged his shoulders and said management said to leave them there because someone will buy them eventually. :-0

I did report this to Stone and a couple weeks later they were gone.

 

I usually look for them on hoppy beers. I have been burned too many times.

 

Yup. They won't get my money.

 

It looks like Bear Republic is putting an actual, visible, non-coded, date on their bottles now ... at least for the Racer 5. This is a bottle I bought earlier this week dated 04-03-13 ...

 

I'd like to see all beers have dates, but that probably won't happen. If it's a beer that won't turn bad with some age on it, I don't worry too much about it. If it's something that's better fresh I'll probably pass, unless I know it's a beer that sells pretty regularly.

 

I think all Pale Ales and IPAs should have a born date