Modern Times cans

Cool, I'll be venturing out and grabbing some today. I've never looked - are there canning date/codes on the bottom?

 

These cans should be fresh as in 3 weeks.

 

Not yet, but I'd be surprised if you find any old cans on the shelves. Every place I know of seems to sell out every week.

 

1) Yup, beer is now available in OC. This week is the "official" launch; "official" because we sent a bunch of beer up to Stone on Friday, and they now have enough to get it out en masse.

2) For whatever reason, Long Beach is apparently part of Stone's OC territory, even though it's in L.A. County, which is why some stores in South/Coastal L.A. have received cans. The "official" L.A. launch is still the first week of January.

3) No date codes yet on the cans themselves, but the case trays are date coded. We really want to be date coding the cans, but the cost of the added equipment currently puts it out of reach for us. As soon as we can afford it, we will be date coding the cans. I feel strongly that date coding is important.

4) Blazing World has indeed seen some variation recently. The main issue we're trying to resolve is how to dry hop it with the massive amount of hops it takes to make this beer as awesome as it should be without adding a ton of dissolved oxygen, which shortens shelf life. We think we've figured it out, but it's taken some experimentation. There's also been some variation in the color, which we're working to fix.

 

I'm noticing "use by" stickers on the 4-packs now. Can anyone shed some light on how to figure out the canning date based on the "use by" date?

 

I'm also curious. My guess is 4 months before enjoy date is can date. Hoppy beer seems to last better in canned beer so 1-2 months is a safe bet. I'm kind of weary of 2 month old bottled hoppy beer though.

 

Jacob answered me a month or so back in another thread, if I remember correctly it's 120 days from canning.

 

I believe @tjensen3618 is right. My total wine store was out of hoppy wheat last month and when they got their latest shipment the stickers were enjoy by 8/2014.

 

thanks y'all.

 

Yup, shelf life is 120 days for Blazing/Fortunate, 150 for Black House/Lomaland. Although we've tasted Lomaland cans that were 180+ days old that still tasted fantastic.

We hope to start date coding the individual cans by this fall.

 

Based on a tip in another thread, I just placed an order from a local wine retailer that brings some cans up to the Bay Area from SoCal. Order placed online for a transfer from Redwood City to SF stores for pickup. Happy to have a source to try your brews!

 

Just got a hand carried delivery of Blazing, Black House and Lomaland up to Nor-Cal! Hurray!

 

Quoting myself because I also ordered some Black House for transfer from the Hollywood location up to SF. Nice!

 

Hey, Jacob--

Any plans to can Booming Rollers?

J.

 

Any chance this might make its way up to NorCal, or is this just going to be southern for now?

 

Any new cans are probably a ways off. The logistics of cans just make them a tough package to get into: the set-up is really expensive & time-consuming, the order minimums are huge, & storing so many pallets is a challenge. On top of all that, we're already leaning really hard on our canning line, which has proven to be wildly inadequate for our needs. So we're going to be very deliberate about adding any new cans.

That said, we do want to get some of our special releases onto shelves, so we're going to start doing some runs of 22oz. bottles using a mobile bottling company (the same guys who do Beachwood, El Segundo, & many others). We actually just figured this out last night, but we're planning to run bottles of Oneida at the end of June; they should hit shelves the first week of July. I'd love to do Booming Rollers after that, but it'll be dependent on whether or not we have enough Citra to support it. People are drinking so much Fortunate Islands, it might be tough. Otherwise, we have a long to-do list of tasty stuff that I hope to be putting into bottles pretty consistently.

Cheers,
Jacob

 

I love Booming Rollers so much, both batches. First batch was super tropical, second batch more fragrant and more melon-like sweetness. If I had to choose, I think I liked the first better, but both were seriously spectacular. I keep coming back for more. Cheers, guys!

 

Mind 'sploded

 

Nice, thanks for the feedback. We all preferred the first batch, too. We felt like it needed a bit more bitterness though, which is why we added some more whirlpool hops for the second batch. Seems like we over did it a bit though and lost some of the hop varietal character under the heavy bitterness. I still think it's a really tasty beer, but when we do it again, it'll hue more closely to the first batch.

Cheers,
Jacob

 

Save dem Citras for Fortunate Islands and bottle Monster's Park.