snaotheus

Beer is good.

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As a result of this thread, I've decided to start contacting breweries about poor beer dating practices.

The message is usually of the general form:
I'm drinking your beer right now. It's <not dated / unreadably dated / unnoticeably dated>. Thank you for making beer -- but please clearly, noticeably, and readably date your beer.

So far...

• 2015-08-22: Contacted Two Brothers about Wobble. Hard to find, human unreadable.
• 2015-08-27: Contacted Pipeworks about Square Grouper. Hard to find, human unreadable date on the bottom. Customer service (Gerritt) responded, asked for more information. I sent pictures of the bottle. Eventually, they confirmed that the code was from the bottle manufacturer (not related to the beer). They informed me that they put batch numbers on their beer, and that these can be checked on their website. Some are not -- but I think these are "made once" or "made once per year" type beers.
• 2015-08-28: Contacted Dogfish Head about Raison D'Extra. Not that I particularly care whether this one is fresh. But if I like it or dislike it -- how old is it? Do I like it fresh? Do I like it six years old?
• 2015-08-31: Contacted Sixpoint about Resin. "Best by" date is clearly and noticeably stamped on the bottom of the can -- but it doesn't taste as good as I remember, and I don't know if "Best by" is a year after canning or a month. So I don't know how old it is. They responded with some information about how long their "Best by" dates are set out from bottling.
• 2015-09-07: Contacted To Øl about Dangerously Close to Stupid. Couldn't find any dates or codes of any kind.
• 2015-11-07: Contacted Karben4 about Idiot Farm. Found the code (half obscured behind the label, dark on dark), maybe (or maybe not) deciphered it as 116 days old. Doesn't taste terribly fresh.
• 2016-04-07: Contacted Ninkasi about Hop Cooler. Couldn't find any dates anywhere. Tastes OK, just primarily bitter without much to balance it. They responded the next day with a picture showing where to find it -- nearly invisible, laser etched near the bottom. But, the date is supposed to be in a standard, human readable format like MAR 14 2016.
• 2016-04-15: Contacted Cascade Lakes about Mosaic IPA. Couldn't find any date or code on the bomber. The head brewer responded 11 days later, saying essentially that although they're working on updating their bottling line, but the date coder wasn't the highest priority.