"We just tapped it" doesn't always mean it's fresh

Curious. What would be the obstacle or difficulty to using both?

 

Lack of space on the can/wrap and/or corrupting the integrity of the design.

 

Shane, at the risk of being a pain in the neck….

As I am typing this message I have a can of Sixpoint Gose in front of me. I drank this beer yesterday as I watched the Eagles win!

On the bottom of the can it lists: “BB18DEC2015”.

By the way this beer is holding up really well! It was very tasty. I should caveat that this beer has been continuously stored cold (in my refrigerator) for the past 5-6 months.

Anyway, there is still a lot of space on the bottom of the can for a packaged on date; just saying.

Cheers!

 

Jack,

The bottom of the can is limited to a certain amount of characters. You are not able to use the entire surface area.

Look closely at the bottom of the can - note the concave shape. You are only able to print on a flat surface.

cheers

 

Shane, it is an imperfect world that we live in.

Oh well, at least I have tasty Sixpoint beer that I can drink so overall life is good!

Cheers!

 

Either someone served you the wrong beer, or your palate was off that night, because the 2014 Abraxas still has more chili and cinnamon flavor than the 2015.

Source: We tapped them side by side last week, and numerous customers asked if we had the kegs mixed up because the 14 had more spice character than the 15.

 

PISSED ME OFF! Quick story kinda related. I was at the Tilted Kilt in Orlando one evening and ordered a fat tire. It was flat as hell. I told the bartender, who begrudgingly brought me a different beer, and then the manager approached me and said he tasted the fat tire I discarded and it tasted fine to him. He then gave me 'a look'. I wanted to reach across the bar and slap the asshole. Like as a consumer, I don't know the difference between fresh and flat? Never going there again. And I doubt the manager tasted my beer, anyway.

 

I'm not going to even suggest that I know about the laws of New York State, but this seems like an incredibly lazy excuse to me. Especially from a well respected brewery such as Sixpoint.

 

yeah as long as the keg stayed in the fridge I bet it would be hard to notice too much change.

 

It isn't very simple at all... people with no restaurant/bar/service experience often suggest things like this that would be very hard to implement.

 

Ok @JackHorzempa ...You are officially approaching @jesskidden status as Mr. Information at the Ready.

Thanks for that reference.

 

The weakest link...usually it's when establishments don't clean their lines.

 

I've told this story here before, but a buddy said a bar near him in Ohio thought the date on Enjoy By meant you're supposed to tap it after that date. I'm sure the keg will taste great long after the EB date, but it's still amusing.

 

Amen Pete. WTF? Whatever happened to the customer is always right? It's not like you devoured a $50 steak and then complained about it being too tough. Screw that place if management handles a single low cost beer issue like that.

 

This is all very true. However, Micromatic are also very big components of the 3/30/300 rule.

This was a study, commissioned by Coors, that found the same rate of decay for:

A beer stored at 90 degrees for 3 days
A beer stored at 72 degrees for 30 days
A beer stored at 38 degrees for 300 days

You might be inclined to buy a month old IPA at your bottle shop. However, no one would think of knowingly buying a 10 month old IPA, regardless of storage conditions. It's in our DNA as beer drinkers.

An unpasteurized, unfiltered beer kept cold for the duration of its lifespan (even a super hopped IPA) will still be lively and vibrant at 60 days and beyond. Now whether the majority of distributors (or bars) do this is of serious concern.

 

And I share that concern. I have no way of knowing if a given beer has been continuously stored cold (e.g., 38 degrees F).

Cheers!

 

As jack and six point point out, it's very important to know the born on date of the keg, but even then, in certain circumstances, a brewery might hold beer in a bright tank for months and then keg. At a local bar I noticed a beer from a local brewery on tap that had been brewed for a special event last February, there was no second batch made. The bar had just recently tapped the keg this November. The style was an English ESB.

In the end it's best to buy beers from breweries you trust and bars you trust to be good stewards of beer quality.

 

While theoretically possible this is a rare occurrence. The vast majority of breweries do not store beer the beer any longer than they deem necessary; it is a timing/revenue thing for the brewery. The other aspects of the beer industry like wholesale distributors and retailers do not seem as concerned in this regard.

Cheers!

 

You're right it is rare, but with smaller breweries the economics of bright tanks and keg storage don't apply as much as larger breweries. I've seen it first hand a few more times than the one account. But probably not something to worry about, In truth I was just listing something else no one has thought of, gets kinda tough on this forum

 

I remember going to this local Italian restaurant. Kind of old school and behind the times. It was late September. We see among their three draft choices, Sam Adams Seasonal. We're thinking Oktoberfest!. On draft! We mentioned what we wanted. They acknowledged they had it but said they had to kick the keg of Summer first. As a party of 8, and 3 drinking beer, the dinner tab was likely to exceed $300 easily. The waiter said that was up to the bar managers descretion.

I guess some places get by on their wine sales, or the cheap macro crap, or maybe its the food? But some of these places need to take the one month loss, and start things fresh every 6 months. They likely had that keg sitting since late July. That's almost two months of a "non tapped" keg just sitting there waiting. And by the time Oktoberfest is ready, it's nearing November.

And all this scares me as we look at canned or bottled on dates of packaged sale items. Yet I never think of that Odell IPA keg that is sitting at some obscure burger joint. That keg could easily be 6 months old. I guess the only safe bet are the seasonals, where you know the dates of when they should be available, and drinking fresh, or drinking at home.

A local brewery just started doing this.


Now given, it seems like on almost every other 4 pack, you will see the numbers stretched, or squished together. So there is definitely a sweet spot for these machines to stamp cans correctly. This is a place that started out canning in 2012 with white stickers on top of their 4 packs through to the middle of this year. Then they got a can stamper, which used to just show the Canned on or CO date. That lasted a few months until they added the second line, BB or best by. This is a place that is doing things right. Progressing the right way. Not making excuses. The biggest obstacle I heard they had was the cost of a stamper was a huge hinderance that took them some time to finally acquire one.

Character limit you say? Have you seen Oskar Blue's special messages.

There's nothing wrong with simply saying that the cost is too high, or we just don't see it as something we want to spend money on (a stamper that can do two lines costs more than a single line stamper, for example). But it can be done, and HAS been done.