Cape May Brewing Company

Looking forward to the new triple IPA dropping this week. Lots of stores by me, Toms River, carry CM beers so it shouldnt be to hard to find I hope.

 

Just picked up a 6pk of Coastal Evacuation bottles and wanted to know what the window for the Best By dates are. Mine are Best By 4/12/18. I'm assuming a 3 month window since it's a double IPA

 

Yeah we list a three month shelf life for our hoppy beers. Personally I prefer a packaged on date so theres no confusion as to when it went into the package, but collectively at CMBC it was decided we go the Best By coding route - so for all of our hoppy beer it's a three month shelf life and for all non-dry hopped beers there's a six month shelf life coded.

We do keep a packaged library going and every couple weeks our lab tech and I will go through and check in on the bottles/cans to make sure they're holding up as we hoped/intended they would, and every test has so far held up to a "true to brand" test.

 

How are those beers stored? Are they stored at room temperature?

Cheers!

 

Thanks for the response and info. Opened a bottle last night and it was great.

 

When will this be heading north? Rumors were out there that the distribution footprint is expanding.

 

Easy fix - slightly rework of your label:

 

We keep a library of both, to keep tabs on how they age under both conditions. We used to have a blanket all beers must be kept cold policy, but through continued testing we determined the non-dry hopped beers aged almost the same when stored warm vs stored cold. We still enforce cold storage of our hoppy offerings, because lets be honest - who wants to buy a warm stored IPA?

 

We have pretty good saturation in Ocean and Monmouth, and starting to get a little more into Mercer and Middlesex counties. Now before anyone comes at me with "thats not North Jersey", remember that from Cape May literally everywhere is North!
When I started at CMBC 5 years ago we were only in Cape May county producing around 1000 barrels a year, whereas in 2017 we brewed over 11,000 barrels and distributed to (geographically) about half the state. True North Jersey will definitely come, but I have no idea when that'll be.
However, we will be doing our annual Cloverleaf event towards the end of March! Unfortunately that's the only time we'll be in actual North Jersey for now though.

 

This is genius and I will be sharing this with our design team!

 

Well, I recently purchased a 6-pack of Coastal Evacuation at my local Retail Beer Distributor and your beer was on their shelves (i.e., not refrigerated). To list a best by date on a beer like Coastal Evacuation but not enforce that the retailers continually store your beers cold (i.e., refrigerated) seems like an 'incomplete' distribution strategy to me.

Cheers!

@jesskidden

 

Yeah a couple of the retailers in the Philly burbs that I've bought CM IPAs from have not kept them cold. And they are reputable distributors. I totally agree with a packaged on dating with best within 3 months label.

 

Ah, "Genius" .... or simply theft?

Its just a reversal of AB's now-defunct "Born On" dating method, which included both a date and their recommended shelf life period.

(Either way, the consumer's got to "do the math" but at least both are there.)

 

I am in Warren County (true-true north)..... but we do make the annual trek to Wildwood for Fireman's Convention in September. I pay a visit to your facility and then usually opt for your offerings at restaurants (Schellinger's was my first taste of City to Shore, and the bartender knew your beers rather well). On my way out of town, I stock up for the beer fridge.

 

Thanks for bringing this to my/our attention! I'm guessing this was in Philly/PA based on the "beer distributor" part? We (legally have to) use a distributor to sell our beers in PA, so it's a little harder to enforce the "keep it cold" requirement, but we do our best to stay on top of them about it. In Jersey, where we self distribute, it's a little easier to keep the beers we want kept cold to be kept cold.

 

Just saw this announced today, for the "true north" folks!
March 20 - 24 Tap Takeover at Cloverleaf Tavern (Caldwell)

 

Picked up a 4 pack of Snag & Drop @ ShopRite in Cherry Hill last night. What a nice beer. I'm usually not a big triple IPA fan but you guys really did a great job (which seems to be par for the course lol). Keep up the great work!

 

Quick question for you: is there any particular reason why CMBC doesn't divulge what kind of hops/malt are in most of their beers? I know your IPA mentions cascades but that's about all I've seen. I understand if it's because of "trade secrets" or whatever (perhaps it's akin to asking a professional BBQ chef his rub recipe...). It's pretty interesting how some companies don't share but then you have some folks like Trillium that will give you every damn hop, malt and adjunct(s) they use (which as a beer geek I really do appreciate). Just curious as to what the philosophy is over there concerning the listing of ingredients. Cheers!

 

Good question, would love to hear more about this too. I recently asked about the latest R&D beer and someone pointed me to Untappd: 5.5 lbs of hops per barrel of Citra, Mosaic, El Dorado, and Bravo
Blog post (found via FB post) describes newest release, Always Ready: "With a medium body, thanks to the addition of wheat and oats in the grain bill, Always Ready is hopped heavily with Mosaic, Citra, Denali, Calypso, Ekuanot, and Zythos, bringing an intense hop aroma paired with a light bitterness."

Now to your point, I don't know and don't really expect that on the cans...of regular releases—maybe given hop choices/availability? They actually talk pretty openly about tweaks/changes to Snag & Drop, def not "trade secret" mentality imo. Except for flagships, most new beers mention hops on their new site, fwiw...and everything I've read/watched about the BA sour beers, Brian goes in depth about yeast, bugs, barrels, bottle conditioning etc.
I agree I would've liked to see hops on cans of City, White Caps, Snag