Rare Aslin Can Dating Sighting?

I haven't checked any of their beers recently. Many years ago they used to date the bottom of their cans so I'm not sure why they stopped. If they're dating them again it's a good sign.

 

The only time I'm aware of Aslin doing date stamps was back when they were relying on a mobile canning company for packaging. When they brought the canning operation in-house at the original Herndon taproom, they claimed they just didn't have the space for stamping equipment. They lost that excuse when they opened their Alexandria facility, and the fact that their cans remained undated basically made it clear they just didn't want to do it. I'm guessing they don't want to deter people from buying months old unrefrigerated IPAs from shelves across their distribution footprint, but that's just speculation on my part.

If they've finally relented on can dating, that's news to me, because I gave up on them rediscovering their IPA magic a long time ago.

 

Ah yeah that would make sense then. It was back in 2017 when I was seeing dates on the cans.

 

I would agree with that speculation

 

What year did you see stamped on them?

 

I noticed some Yellow Starfish at a bottle shop in Arlington today and, based on the curiosity this thread aroused, checked the cans for date stamps. While there was some sort of code stamped on them, it didn't appear to indicate date information. It seems they now have the equipment for date stamping but don't want to use it for anything customers would find useful, which is more or less par for the course for Aslin.

 

At the end of last year and early this year Aslin was using some weird letter and number dating combination where it would be a numeric day, followed by a letter for the month. I believe this was a day and month (A being January, B for February, L for December) of when it was canned. Since then it seems like they moved to a new stamp that I can't make any sense of. I've stopped buying their beer due to inconsistency and the dating issue, but a few friends still occasionally pick up cans at the brewery based on what is tasting good.

 

Can't recall which beer it was but came across the same thing a month or so at Wegmans in Charlottesville. I had to do at least a quadruple take and still then didn't believe it was an actual Aslin can! Ha!

 

How was the beer?
Good-ish?