Adding packaged on/best buy dates

No canning/bottling date, no dinero...

 

I really prefer a canning date rather than "best by" date. I say this as I find more and more beers that are marked "keep chilled" but on some retailer's room temp shelf...especially in CA where we like to cut off power to a district so the air con dies in 100 deg F heat wave. :-)

 

There should be an industry standard dating system in place, no lobbying, no moans, no groans. Just simple born on dates on all beers, some beers no matter the style can last longer than others in the same style for a variety of reasons but the consumer should be able to decide, easily, if they are comfortable with a certain brewery's beer after a certain period of time since canning/bottling. But I think the issue with this system is who gets to decide when the beer should be returned to the brewery/distributor without some sort of expiry system. If all the stores or breweries couldn't recoup anything on prove-ably "expired" product, a huge sector of the industry would suffer presumably. As I see it, as a whole, damned if you do, damned if you don't. What's good for the consumer, isn't always good for the industry and vice versa.

 

I would be a supporter of this. It would be ideal if the Brewers Association would mandate something like this. Perhaps a requirement that if a brewery uses the upside down logo they also must utilize an easy to understand packaging date on those beers.

Since you are in the beer retail business maybe you can opine on this whole returning of old beer thing. I have seen a number of BAs who work in the beer retail business post that it is next to impossible to return old beer (AB beers being the exception). They call the Wholesale Distributors about out of code beer and nothing happens. It would not surprise me to hear that your store is 'better' in this regard but it sure seems like for the vast majority of beer retailers that old product very rarely gets returned (except for AB products).

Cheers!

 

Money. Money. Money.

If you cant date it then you haven’t a clue as to its freshness, it can sit there forever and you’d never know it. Put a date on it you might lose some money as guys look at it and won’t buy if it’s old stock, distributors might have to buy it back. I’m sure no dates are distributor approved, but it’s a simple message too, no date no buy and let the stuff rot.

 

But that is contrary to just about every other "consumable" product on the market, which almost universally use "Best by/Use by" date coding. Buy bread, butter, eggs or bottled water and you won't find "Baked on", "Churned on", "Laid on" or "Pumped out of our artisan wells on" dates, you'll find what consumers essentially consider "expiration" dates.

Even Anheuser-Busch (which trademarked the ridiculous "Born On" terminology- see below) realized that when they changed their method of coding a few years back - " 'Freshest before' is a clearer way to communicate freshness to consumers."

Why would anything change, if either dating method were to become universal? The brewer would still decide what the designated pull date/shelf life would be for each of it's products, let their distributors - and hopefully, retailers and consumers - know and (try to) enforce that.

 

Your point is well taken, but I have to say that we have two local bakers that put "baked on" stickers on their bread packaging. I can't think of any other products that have production dating vs. expiration dating though

 

I always pick the lager.

 

A lot of stores used to have dates on the price tag and rotate stock (I'm speaking of stores in general, not just beer). Seems like that would get a lot closer to identifying how old a specific product is.

This is one of those topics where I pretty much agree with everyone, even the contradictory points. I think that the brewery pages here could be much more useful, and a date code decrypter would be a good step, especially if there was an option of "no known date code".

 

In California, at least, we are able to recoup to varying degrees of returnability. If the product is deemed inconsumable, there's a recall on it and we have the choice of monetary credits, refunds, or swaps. Damaged product as well as it is compromised. For spoilage we are able to request a direct swap that can be based on the SKU of said product and depending on is it's a seasonal item or not, it may change what beer we can swap for but generally were able to swap liquid volume for liquid volume or take a minor credit (like if I have two expired six packs of a particular product, I can get a credit for the two as long as I order a full case of the same product). Its relatively complicated but at least the option exists but its because this option exists i feel that buyers are less scrupulous with their purchases out here knowing that they will be taken care of. The expiry of beer based on date is what saves us on the store level as far as not losing money, but it's assumed that most consumers will be ok with purchase within the allotted time frame of the beer. With the current culture militantly seeking "as fresh as possible" beer, its harder to get people to buy the beer when it has months left on it's supposed freshness but is over three weeks old, even though we received it less than a week ago. The freshest it can possibly be for us is turning out to not be fresh enough for people. It's a problem.

 

I would like to see packaging dates used as part of being certified by ABA or the like

 

I prefer a canned/bottled on date, if I know this I can determine by style if I want to buy the beer. Best By is arbitrary set by the brewery, so Jever is what 15 months out, you think it’s better than say a fresh Old Mecklenburg Capt Jack Pils? I’d take odds on that. Stouts/ Porters not picky at all, Im not into sours, but I understand they age incredibly well too. So it’s hoppy beers where we focus on the canning dates. Unless it’s a seasonal or a special release, no date I just don’t buy it, there’s too many options to risk the money not knowing what your buying. For me I appreciate when a brewer is confident enough in his product to clearly date their products. I don’t like weird codes either, just simplify it.

 

Yeah, I will only buy "unpackaged" (or open paper bag) fresh French, Italian and other "bakery" breads baked that day. (A lot of them will only sell it that day, too.) I was referring to commercial baking companies who package their products in plastic or cellophane, sold at grocery/convenience stores - the products that often have these annoying little !@#$-ers, which break or I lose before the bread's finished.

Hey, look at that - both a Sell By and a Best By date - never even noticed. (This company also uses different color closures, so you can easily tell if the ones in the back of the shelf are a different, usually fresher, date .)

How so? Most beer goes through the 3 tier distribution system - the retailer's delivery date does not give someone any idea on how long it was at the brewery, importer and/or the distributor's warehouse. Just a quick scan of the cases sitting on the floor fresh off the truck in some stores will show that the beer that "just came in" can vary greatly and some can be very old.

 

I agree with you but the reality is something more confusing because of the number of factors that go into a brew recipe that may alter the amount of freshness a particular beer may have. I've had IPAs over a year old that for the life of me I couldn't find anything wrong with taste wise and as well IPA i swear were self aware and died on the day the date said on the can. Now with that out there how could we tell the average consumer/industry how long IPAs last on the shelf fresh. The unfortunate reality is based on averages, and stress tests breweries put their beer through to determine a safe window of freshness under the most dubious of conditions(hot trucks, dry shelves, being shaken, cold to warm to cold storage, etc. some breweries make beers that don't last very long and somehow breweries make beers that can last much longer. Hard to apply a uniform time frame based on style when there are such glaring anomalies that exist within a certain style. There for hard to tell when each IPA, each Stout, etc will turn.

 

Completely agree that there are many variables here besides age. Oxygen, storage conditions, the hops used, I’d swear some hops seem to stand up better, but all things equal is rather take a chance on a 4 week ipa than a 4 month old beer.

 

You used the terminology of "for spoilage", does this mean out of code beer? Does every Wholesale Distributor honor this? If so, then you are much more fortunate than beer retailers that are outside of California.

When it comes to hoppy beers, the beer geek crowd (which I presume is much of your customer base) do indeed desire beers to be super fresh.

And that is part of the reason why some beer consumers demand super fresh IPAs.

There are multiple reasons for why hoppy beers are very sensitive to aging. The popular IPAs of today, the Juicy/Hazy IPAs, are typically very sensitive to age. How well the beer is packaged from a TPO (Total Packaged Oxygen) level is another factor. While there may be some IPA brands which may be less sensitive to aging for the customers they likely think that super fresh is 'better' which is indeed the case.

Cheers!

 

Since I have experience with a variety of food retail jobs, I just use the term "spoilage" universally for anything that has a limited shelf life and goes bad in any category. Anything we could call "perishable goods" which beer could qualify under for the more sensitive styles. Some breweries we get product directly from, do nothing to honor any kind of returns and the trick is to simply not over purchase time sensitive beers that you can't move within the generally acceptable freshness window +/- when the beer was brewed and when it gets to your store. Unfortunately the only way to mitigate this is to buy brewery direct but that would alienate a large portion of consumers who don't have the privilege of being able to get to the brewery for releases or just generally buy their weekly beer. That's part of why hub stores like mine exist to act as liaison between producer and consumer, but the demand for freshness beyond what is capable and the reality are hardly reconciling. As the middleman, I understand the need for fresh product but, I also understand the need in the industry for consumers to be able and willing to accept a less stringent time frame of arguable freshness in order to get the products they want. I'm not saying that anyone should just pay top dollar for less than fresh product but a product that is considered fresh should say when it was made and people should be able to feel confident purchasing it, as they do with their bread or milk. I know people are going to crucify me for my view on freshness but there should be an acceptable middle ground that serves both sides. I hope we find it soon.

 

Man I've been noticing in myself lately that I've internalized the uber freshness obsession. I put down a pack of IPA last week that was about 9 weeks old. I came to my senses and picked it back up and enjoyed it.

I'm trying to remind myself that if a brewery can't make an IPA that is good for 3 months in the package then they shouldn't be packaging and I can't buy their packaged product. It has gotten crazy and I feel for retailers.trying to cater to the picky craft beer consumer of today

 

I think this is a part of why we see the huge push to cans, it’s an effort to eliminate some variables to secure their product. I agree that at 9 weeks any ipa should still be good, and there’s a good reason why a lot of freshness guys hold it under two months, fir local product I can easily better that. Perhaps they’re old reasons and maybe no longer valid as brewers push the envelope with technology to better the stability of their beers. Still some styles are hardier by nature than others, maybe it’s the Hops used, maybe it’s the push to cans, maybe it’s simply being local and getting the product from brewery to store under better conditions that is a new normal. I’ve been in the storage area of Total Wine, and both wine and beer is sitting in a warm storage area with stuff stacked up on pallets. Buy more get a better price, but more sits warm too. It’s really why I don’t buy anything at TW anymore, I’m sure sitting in a warm warehouse doesn’t do the wine any favors either. I buy from smaller retailers where they won’t over buy.

Oh and that TW is also know to keep overflow in trailers parked on the property. There’s a huge problem there.

 

Ya, the current distribution system isn't built to handle extremely delicate product from 8,000 breweries. At this point, if I was a brewer, I wouldn't send anything into distro that I wasn't confident could survive 6 months of abuse by distributors and retailers. It just seems like its so easy to alienate potential customers when someone pays $15-$20 for a couple of beers that are not what the brewer intended.