Should best by/born on date become manditory?

For as many IPA's as it would help me want to buy, it would likely me to put down several more bottles.

thats just how it works if you want a beer that the mass public doesn't want. BMC stuff doesn't sit on many shelves, solid IPA's/craft beers - even locals have a knack for sitting a bit more.

 

Relevant to this thread: I bought two pick-a-sixers. One of the beers, a Victory Headwaters PA, has an enjoy by date of JUL 15, 2011. Shame on me for going to the beer store while my wife and kids sat in the car. Hard not hurry picking out beers in that situation.

 

Born on dates would be awesome!

 

No, i want WB to drain pour all their beer before bottling.

 

A best by date is useless, I could put a best by date a year out on a temperamental IPA and it would suck. All craft beers should have a born on date on the bottle. Some put it on the box, but we generally or rarely see the box unless we're buying a case. At the price of craft beer and given the competition it should be mandatory, beer is a live product not a can of baked beans that can sit on a shelf for 20 years.

 

is this not done because it could cause problems with inventory turnover?

i can't imagine breweries want to eat cost because someone has determined that IPA's are no good past 2 weeks. or their Porter shouldn't be consumed past 3 months. it's bad for business to tell people "this product will suck in a few days.. so don't buy it."



not everyone has the discerning palate of the average BA (1% of the beer drinking population?) so most people aren't concerning themselves with dates. they're more interested, i'd guess, in green/clear bottles vs. brown or cans. probably far more so than what date the beer was brewed.

asking/demanding breweries (many of them small to very small) to hand stamp their bottles or to buy very expensive new bottling/canning equipment so satisfy a niche customer group seems kinda silly when it doesn't really benefit them.

maybe i'm all wet

 

Can someone else who actually knows a couple of brewers please contribute to this MASSIVE issue in 2012 which is clearly likely to bankrupt every non BMC brewery and let us know how they date their bottles?

I know 3 brewers fairly well and they all simply add a date stamp to the (standard) label prior to bottling

This is not expensive... this is not time consuming ....

THIS IS 2012 FFS !!!!

The way some people harp on about the time and expense you'd think they were bottle dating using adders blood dispensed through a bagpipe !!! (Brew Dog may try this method !)

 

Knowledge is power, information is the hands of those who do not know who to use it is dangerous. There are far too many people out there who have whined about six week old IPAs on the shelf, calling out stores for carrying "old stock". 90 days is standard shelf life for an IPA according to a large majority of freshness conscience brewers, people can apply their own standards however they want but to complain about product being on a shelf and less than 90 days old is ignorant.

Point being that if you list only a born on date or only a best by date to are telling only half the story. Both are useful, both have their place but only when they are used in combination do we have a complete picture of what is going on.

 

at least one brewer (who i won't call out) has stated that this is a fairly big expense for his company. :shrug:

maybe there's a reason the many many brewers who read this forum aren't chiming in about it. it's a money thing. no response will satisfy and some responses may cause them to lose customers.

 

From another brewer (as quoted in a Mass. Beverage Business article):

The cost of actually putting the dates on the bottles is perhaps the most bogus reason (not to date code), (Boston Beer Co.'s Jim) Koch said. “Doing it is very easy,” he laughed. “When we first did it, we did it with a table saw. It was that easy. You’re printing the labels anyway; we just printed the year on the label, and notched the month with the saw. You can do it for about the cost of a neon sign. There’s nobody who can’t afford it when you do it in such a simple way. ” ​

(emphasis added)​

 

The reason breweries do not date bottles is because the consumers have not given them enough incentive to. If they continue to move products and are not receiving overwhelming feedback asking for it why change what is obviously not broke?

I do not care how much we want to talk about it, discuss it or whine and cry about it, bottle dating is simply not a big issue. If it was a big issue more people would contact breweries directly and stop buying bottles that weren't dated. Let's not make excuses and lets put the blame where it belongs.

 

Caveat emptor!

If you don't want undated beer, don't buy it. If enough don't buy undated beer the market will change. Dating does add another step to the manufacturing process, and gives another possibility for error. The bigger the brewer, the more the cost is spread out due to the more advanced machinery. Not all brewers print their own labels, and not all use an entire run of labels on one date. Koch's statement is true in many, but not all, cases.

 

I believe the bottled date should be required but it will not happen I'm guessing

 

This is my same beef, mostly for the IPA's, the beers that age well, it doesn't matter much.

 

Good information which makes me think, do brewers sometimes stretch that "Best By" date? Who determines this and it's up to me to determine if my palette is on the same time line as the brewery. (Which it usually isn't depending on the beer.) I really struggle with this because I think I have made myself a prisoner of my own taste buds in some cases, it's frustrating because I hate being so $%#@ picky, I would just love to sit down and enjoy a beer without analyzing it. Head in palm, good gawd, WHAT HAVE I BECOME!?! (Totally serious.)

 

re: best by dates,

just give us a bottle date. if we really care when it's best by (and obviously most people reading this do), we'll look up the style or check your website (you can write "drink within 6 months" on your website in the beers section; not hard to do). edit: or, give us bottled on AND best by, but not just best by.

i still don't think this should be mandatory (laws aren't made because "wouldn't it be awesome to know when every beer was bottled?"), but i do continue to think that every brewer should print bottled on dates on every beer. if it's not cost prohibitive (see jesskidden's post), all the better.

 

so this has nothing to do with the question at hand about bottle dating. still makes no sense why you would bring that up in this particular thread.

 

Sometimes it's the retailers which want relatively extended dates.
No, whatever posters may think,it's not a major expense or worry for a brewer to add a date to the label.I've been involved with a couple of very small breweries at the time mandatory dating was introduced-their biggest headache was what date to choose as they simply hadn't a clue as to the treatment it would experience once it left the brewery.The actual date stamping was simple and straightforward and drew no complaints.Then when it was required to add allergy advice they simply added the information on neck strips.There was a schedule attached to the requirements which allowed time to use up existing labels.
If it did involve additional expense then this would place a brewery at a competitive disadvantage.This would justify a government or state law which would equalise things.

 

It's not the role of the government to regulate away any minor problem we may encounter in our lives. No wonder we are tens of trillions of dollars in the hole.

 

We have EU regulations for best before dates, but I would massively prefer a mandatory bottling date. I absolutely can't see any reasonable argument against that. I think it's just down to lack of legislation and proper lobby work as opposed to i.e. wine. Sure, for supermarket stuff like lager it's good to have a best-before date, but for beer that can be easily cellared, it would be great to have a bottling date on there rather than a completely made-up best before that makes absolutely no sense in most cases.

Any beer with a bottling date gets a big tick from me. Also, anything with a proper ingredients list.