Determining canned/bottled dates in variety packs

That's a good point. I think they tend to vary in freshness. For instance, I bought a Sierra Nevada Fall pack for Thanksgiving day and all 4 beers had a different bottled on date, including the Pale Ale which was about two and a half months old. The coffee stout was fresher, though (1 month old). You really can't tell on a lot of them.

 

Had the winter stone variety pack with the cali-belgique and all were within a month old, except for the cali-belgique, which was about 2.5 months old. They still all tasted good though.

 

Don't most of the variety packs have a "packaged on" date on the outside of the box somewhere? In my experience the bottles in those boxes are, if not bottled on the same date at that, then not much older.

But yeah, if the box doesn't have any date on it at all I'd probably aim for variety packs you know came out within the past month or two just to be safe, especially if they're mostly hoppy beers. Fortunately most breweries' variety packs (as far as I've seen) are seasonal so it's pretty easy to tell which one is the most recent either based on the packaging or whether any seasonal beers are included, even if there is no date stamp on the box itself.