Did Green Flash STOP bottle dating?

I'm there. They both (lag/gf) lost me this year.

 

I read that fast and thought you left your gf, lol

 

That beer gets better with time on it. Your loss

 

its on all the bottles here in Minneapolis right at the top of the bottle

 

In a perfect world you could do that, but just because the store got it yesterday doesn't mean the distributor hasn't been sitting on it for weeks or months prior to sending it to the retailer. We are constantly checking dates (when we can) and refusing stuff on a weekly basis because the distributors don't seem to care that the beer they just sent out the door is old and faded.

 

I just noticed this on green bullet. first 4 pack I bought had a bottle date second I didn't buy noticed there was a best by date.

 

I noticed this as well. I have stayed away from the other bottles on the shelf, not because I want to, but because the bottle date is so faded that I cannot read it. I'm just waiting for Palate Wrecker to come back.

 

Hmnn.. I'll have to check her enjoy by date.. cheers

 

I just had a bottle of Green Bullet, and it had a "Best by" date on the neck.

 

Got a West Coast IPA at my bottle shop a week or so ago and there was no date on it, so...

 

What length does GF put on its best by dates. My WCIPA case say best by 3/19/14. No bottle dates. What do you think the bottled on date would be?

 

Noted. The IPA is still fresh, though. I've seen bottled on dates on all of the gf beers I have had, they have been tough to spot but they are there

 

I know you only joined ten months ago, but is it possible that you missed the huge to-do people on BA make about the freshness of IPAs? Some users on here profess not to drink them after being any older than three-weeks old (or, in the case of Pliny the Elder, a week). People take their IPA freshness very seriously around these parts, and, if you'd ever had a five-month old bottle of most IPAs, you'd realize why they do so. I don't subscribe to this philosophy as much as some on this site, but there is certainly something to it. I think all breweries should be forced by law to bottle-date every single bottle, and not with an "enjoy by" date (breweries, likely for monetary reasons, seem to think their hop-forward beers are still "best by" or "enjoyable by" a date long after most consumers would agree to), a legitimate bottling date (I don't care if it's Julian dating or whatever) so I know exactly when the beer was put in the bottle.

 

Didn't miss that at all. But I think it's blown MASSIVELY out of proportion and I've made that clear multiple times. I'm just saying that if Green Flash puts a "best buy" date, the beer will still be good on that date. They know their beer better than we do, and would not put a date on their bottle if the beer would taste like shit if drank on that date. In fact, I would hazard a guess that the beer would be good 2-3 month beyond that date. Sure, I know IPAs don't hold their flavor as well as some other styles, but I'm sure some hold it better than others, and clearly Green Flash believes that theirs can stand up to some shelf time. I trust "best by" dates over "bottled on" dates any day. Why leave it to my own assumptions rather than the expertise of the breweries that created it?

 

That's surely a fair and sound argument, but from experience (having unfortunately not heeded my own advice and picked up some Green Flash West Coast IPA that was four-months old, assuming a six-month best by allowance, and, on another occasion, having a friend discover a Bells Hopslam that had gotten lost in his fridge that was close to expiring but had not quite yet), I have found that breweries may believe that something should hold up when, in actuality, it doesn't. Yeah, the beer is still drinkable, but it definitely doesn't taste like the brewer intended it to when they initially bottled it. Whether the change the flavor profile goes under is good to you or not is subjective, but to most palates it seems this is a negative transformation (assumed based on BA's obsession with freshness). I'll take my own experience with older hop-forward beers than what the brewer seems to think.

That said, I bought some 2012 Sierra Nevada Celebration in May of 2013, and it was still awesome. I've also had some older Torpedo, and it, too, was still very drinkable. Do with that what you will.

 

They dated green bullet released 2 months ago with an expiration date in March 2014! At best u got 20 days on a triple ipa!!! Thy can't be trusted in bottles anymore. Green flash is horrible expired

 

Best by 6 months out on a triple ipa wtf is that

 

Triple IPA = triple the shelf life. Duh.

 

Becomes a Barleywine after that