A Victory for Fresh Beer

Pretty sure this has happened a couple times in the past year, namely Ballast Point and Green Flash!! Good stuff.

 

What brewery was this

 

Should have kept arguing until they agreed to 'bottled on' dating. I hate codes, although they are better than no dating at all.

 

I don't get Julian codes or "best by" dates. Why make it so cryptic? Just tell us when it came off the bottling line. Don't force us to play detective as it's usually impossible to do at the point-of-purchase...unless you're happy to take our money before we've discovered we've bought a bottle older than it should be.

 

I think Julian codes make sense for breweries because they are easy to understand for those who care to look, yet they don't deter buyers who aren't looking for them but might be upset by an obvious date telling them the beer isn't "fresh."

 

I agree with this. Despite the slight hassle, I will always look up the codes breweries use because I care about freshness. Looking at someone who might buy only macro products has probably no understanding of the concept of months old beer. Seeing a date from two or three months ago might make them think the beer is too old and lead to a non-purchase. That hurts the brewery's sales. So this makes sense. However, I respect breweries that will put the bottled on date or a best by date on their beers, because they want customers to experience that beer at its best and are willing to give up one immediate sale for the potential of multiple sales when a customer has a fresh beer and a great experience, leading to repeat business.

 

Congratulations! As someone who often lets breweries know whose beer I bought instead of their undated beer it's nice to know others do similar things and also see results. (Although I suspect your web site may have more cumulative impact than my mails.... :-) )

 

Their wallets can hear you.

 

I don't care if they use Julian or normal bottling date, but if anyone just puts a date and doesn't indicate whether it's "best by" or "bottling," that'd be annoying.

 

I reccomend the Mayan calendar.

 

Good work for taking action and getting results! I by more Stone than I ever did because of their bottle dating and commitment to getting old beer off the shelves. I also let their competitors know that I was buying less of their beer because of lack of bottle dating. As someone else mentioned, Green Flash and Ballast Point added dates to their bottles.

 

A Julian code *is* "bottled on" dating. I agree that "best before" dating is confusing because it still doesn't tell you how many months after bottling they consider "best." But a Julian code (technically called "Ordinal date") only requires grade school level math to "decode." If you care about fresh beer you should be able to figure this out, and there are even apps for that like this one.

 

The bottled on date doesn't tell us about the estimated shelf life of the beer unless we also know what type of bottling line is in use at the brewery. With an IPA and many other beers that bottling line can make a 2-3 month difference in shelf life

 

That's a new one on me.

 

That's why we're here. To learn new things.


http://beeradvocate.com/community/threads/best-by-vs-bottle-on-dates.43835/#post-553522

 

I appreciate the link to further reading on the subject, but I was hoping for a little bit more than just a quote of yourself from a month ago saying the same thing in a little more detail. :-) How much oxygen do different bottling lines impart? What is the variance? Is oxygen more an enemy of IPA's than other styles? Among brewers who use a "best before" date, how many of them base it on the type of bottling line they are using vs. just making it up? When I posted about this beer last month, should I have bought some because it was almost four months before the "best by" date?

Edit: I don't expect you to answer all that, but any additional reading you or anyone knows about would be way cool.

 

The discussion focuses around Victory's bottling line. They purge O2 and counter pressure with Co2. by doing so they claim that beers like Hop Wallop have a shelf life of a whole year. Vs other local IPAs which have a shelf life of 3-4 months.

 

They do this at my local "Brew on Premises" place. I had been assuming that most commercial producers are doing it.

I'm guessing the majority of BA's who know about this think Victory's claim is all marketing gimmick?