Is Bottle Dating Really THAT Difficult?

As I recall Jim Koch said it costs as much as a cheap band saw costs, and can save time by doing a large stack of labels all at once.

 

How come ALL brewers in the EU, however small , manage to date their beers if it's that difficult or expensive? And while at it, display the ABV ? I quite believe that American brewers are just as capable as their European friends

 

Requirement (EU) and consumer-friendly business practice (USA) are two quite different things.

 

So you say. But what if the date is 10/12/15, is this October 12th or December 10th? Very American of you to assume all countries should use the American format.

 

No they don't - changing the year on the label can be done without another COLA, according to the TTB's "Allowable Revisions To Approved Labels"

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Since some posters above have mentioned Jim Koch's well-known quote about the OP's question, here it is as it was originally stated in Mass. Beverage Business magazine:

 

I stand corrected. Thanks @jesskidden!

 

Isn't that one of those learning curve stories he had from way back in the day though? It was either him or Grossman that mentioned using one of those things when they were still young kids on the block.
While possible. Most places (that I know of at least) use roll labels.
That kind of task is just not going to ever happen.

 

"The cost of actually putting the dates on the bottles is perhaps the most bogus reason (not to date code), Koch said.“Doing it is very easy,” he laughed. “When we first did it, we did it with a table saw. It was that easy. You’re printing the labels anyway; we just printed the year on the label, and notched the month with the saw. You can do it for about the cost of a neon sign. There’s nobody who can’t afford it when you do it in such a simple way.”

Ithaca did it til last year. Notch dating is easy. New breweries are the only ones who might benefit by it, but larger breweries probably can afford better methods. Breweries who don't date don't get my business for hoppy beers. I know over 50 fine beer lovers who feel the same way. I am in favor of all of us not purchasing undated hoppy beers. If we do all of a sudden it will be affordable at every brewery in the country to date all their hoppy beers.

 

I agree with you. I have seen beer with dates that were nine months old so I did not buy them. If not for the date, I may have been tempted to purchase them if it was a beer I had not had before but as a general rule, no bottling date, no purchase. Dust on the bottle may also be a hint of the age.

Seasonable beers are ok without dates as are some special releases you can check out first.

 

Here's what a small brewer can do, a hand stamp, felt pen, etc. Yup it's a PIA, takes time for sure, but I will buy more beer from places that do this.

 

Why would that be? Almost all lower ABV beer styles are even more sensitive to time that higher ABV beers.

 

Or maybe brewers could contract it out? However, I'm sure it would would be cheaper yet to have a high school kid hit each bottle cap or can with a sticker gun.

 

Whatever the reason for brewers not to date there bottles, it's BS and they need to step it up.

It's 2015, putting the creation date on a perishable product should be mandatory, especially given all of the other asinine rules/laws surrounding alcohol and liquor in most states.

 

There is probably an Economics lesson here. The ultimate factor for these breweries is whether not dating beers is costing them sales and, on the positive side, whether adding dating would increase their sales. The increasingly saturated craft beer marketplace will sort this out eventually.

 

I did not think about that but it is a good point. Thanks!

 

Captain Lawrence Seeking Alpha
"Uses a born on date"
Could not find any date.

Dark Horse Double Crooked Tree Double IPA
"Uses a bottling date. Halfway up the neck of the bottle in Julian format: DDD-YY. First three numbers are the day of the year. YY is the last 2 digits of the year. 13=2013."
Could not find it.

Terrapin Rye Cubed
"Uses a best by date. It's notched on the side of the label, on cans and on their kegs. Calculate 6 months prior to find the bottling date. Seasonal Sessions and Monster Beers releases are not notched but do have a shelf life: 6 months for Seasonal, 1 year for Monster. Bottlings for these are released within a week of each other. Side Projects and Special Releases are style-dependent."
Nothing was notched on the label. It just says "Vintage 2015."

 

Agree, it's also a short term/long term game. Beers like Enjoy By are really changing the market attention to bottling dates and expiry dates. The way I look at it, if you are distributing out of your local zone, you should be dating. If you are very small, only sell within a small radius, you can keep an eye on beer stocks easily. Beyond that, you should find a way to date bottles.

Once you start distributing farther, you need a way to track batches and inventory properly, so some way of coding the bottle is required. Might as well start dating them at the same time!

 

"Best By/Before" dates are the most annoying to me - I'll decide that for myself. I want to freaking know when it was bottled.

 

I believe it is Trillium who uses or used to use a pricing gun to added dated stickers to their beers. Creative, cheap and effective workaround for a small brewery. Where there's a will, there's a way.

 

While the cost of the machines for stamping/coding/etc should not be a barrier to a brewery, there are much larger ramifications to coding. The codes used in food manufacturing are there in the event that something has gone wrong. If during production, a metal piece breaks and falls into a bottle/can, that code is what is used for any recall or hold/release actions needed.

This is a basic food safety situation, the ramifications come a long when someone makes a mistake on a code. For example, say an employee reverses 2 digits on a julian/best by/whatever code, then something goes wrong with that batch, when performing the recall, the wrong product will come back. This leaves the potential hazard available to the public.

Also, most systems of traceability are set up with certain rules for coding, meaning what might be easiest for a consumer to read may well the be most difficult for a system to track. In the world of small margins and the ever increasing need for cost efficiency, anything a company can do to streamline simple function usually wins. This is why Julian Dates are so often used.

Is it annoying to have to look up what month and day Julian 327 is? Sure, but it does help with costs in the long run. I know I am willing to spend a few seconds to look up a date to save a little bit of money on my already expensive beer habit.