Brewed / canned on dates?

You answered your own question. The beer is "brewed" on one date. It ferments, maybe gets transferred to a bright tank after primary, and when clarity, carbonation, and the other variables are ready, it gets a "packaged" date. Any where from 10 days to a couple months difference.

Why your average beer drinker would care about the "brewed on' date is beyond me.

 

Maybe if they had a variety of styles it would be neat to compare the brewed on to canned/bottled on dates far various beers. A barrel aged stout or wild ale would be many months, while ales are in the 2 week range and lagers in the 3-4 week range. But other than comparing styles and for shits and giggles, not much other benefit.

 

In that case, you would need 3-4 dates: brewed, fermentation finished/put into barrels, date out of barrels, and packaged date.

i have no doubt some of us are nerdy enough to want to know these things.

 

Key phrase "some of us" haha. We can nerd out while the masses read the paragraph of dates in confusion.

 

They need to add a user addressable field "Drank on date".

 

I would definitely find that to be useful information.

 

Canning dates for the most part would be all that’s needed. The only place I know were I can drink from the brite tanks is Resident Culture in Charlotte, it kinda defines freshness.

 

Send me all your "old" beer !

I am not as fussy as most here. I get where folks do not want a beer several months down the road from bottling-mostly for IPA's. The hops may have faded. To me the key is was it made well to start w. If so it may not be as "bright" as it once was but I have never run into a drain pour due to a beer being outside of prime condition.

There are several things at work here - how much turnover does the store you are shopping at have on stock, how "good" was the beer when it was at it's peak, is there something in the production/packaging process that causes a beer to degrade sooner.

Again, no drain pours here.

 

You could always contact the brewer and ask. They might have a better answer than we do.

 

I'd be more impressed if craft brewer's could, under coordination of the Brewer's Association;

• Place canned/bottled dates...
• On the front label...
• In a standard location...
  
• In a standard human understandable format not requiring explanation/decoding...
• In a large enough standard readable font...
• In high contrast with the background color...
  
• Using a printing method that doesn't easily smear or suffer dot-matrix woes...
• And labelled as the canned/bottled date...

They cooperated on the Independent Craft Brewer Seal, why not this? How about combine the seal and the date?

 

Sir! How dare you bring logic onto the internet? Harrumph!

 

Without disclosing the beer, brewery, or how I got the info, I can think of one occasion when having a brewed on date and also packaging date would have allowed customers to know the popular, hoppy beer they were drinking was in brite waaayyy too long, and explained why folks were complaining the beer was different from previous years.

Of course in that case, the brewery probably wouldn't want that info known. Not sure why a brewery would put that info on beers made properly..

 

As one of the ones most likely labeled as fussy I just wanna say I am happy to buy a two month old hoppy beer if that is the freshest they have of a beer in the style and quality I enjoy. I am also that guy that, when given the choice between hoppy beers that are about equal in quality, will ALWAYS pick the freshest one.

 

I am kinda in the same camp as @scream - I am not the biggest stickler when it comes to dates and have some hellaciously old beers in my possession, but I'd rather see the date than the seal. I suppose they have already put the effort into the seal thing so that's not going away, but it does seem that establishing a uniform practice for dat coding would be a better use of the BA's time. Of course, then we'd ALL have knowledge and we know how dangerous that can be...

 

My guess is that the distributors and store owners would oppose consistent dating because it would mean more old beer returned when it doesn't sell to unwitting customers, and some ignorant customers might balk at a two month old stout. Brewers could optionally add an expiration date which would benefit stores for stouts/etc, but hurt stores for IPAs/etc.

 

They’ve already spent the time to have a recommended dating, but have no power of enforcement.

 

That's true - wish they did have some enforcement capabilities, but they are like any other trade association. They can only suggest. Which, unfortunately, leaves it up to the consumer.