Taking personal responsibility for old beer purchases

There's a decent chance that they wouldn't be legally able to give a person free beer. Especially if the person is in some other state and not coming direct to one of their locations

 

Well, JJs is a minimart right in the downtown core, and pretty much the only time I buy beer there is for a "walking beer" if I'm perambulating home. BTW, Double Mountain did a solid after I contacted them, had a rep come by and clear the store of their old product and sent me a couple bottles of fresh KG.

The one store I regularly check dates at is Grocery Outlet, it's not unusual to find year old beers there. They've been getting better, but it's wise to check when there. Everyplace else in town I'm likely to shop at is decent at keeping up on things.

 

Or any side of the story in this case.
Please don't take this as a criticism (I'm grateful for moderation) - I'm just throwing this out there as something to consider. Why create a thread referencing this situation without the person who started it? The original thread could have been used for this discussion and your OP could have been a response to the poster... which could have potentially created the dialogue leading to the concept of your quote below (rather than simply closing the door on this consumer and having them engage on other social platforms).

 

Likely depends on state laws. As I mentioned in my reply to John, I reported the year old Fresh Hop beer I found at a minimart to the brewery, and they sent two bottles of the current years version. The beer was sent from Oregon to Washington. YMMV.

 

Yeah I assume it's a pretty complicated mess to figure out whether a brewery can give a consumer free beer. But at a minimum we'd need to know both of their locations. And given that the brewery in question is in PA I'm guessing it's less likely than in Oregon/Washington.

That's a great gesture by the brewer in your case though and definitely the thing to do to keep customers satisfied

 

Victory could have asked which retailer the person purchased the beer from (and maybe they did?) and send their beer representative there to better find out things here.

On a related note I once found out of date Stone Enjoy By beer at my local retail beer distributor and I reported this situation to Stone Brewing via an online reporting system on their website. A week later I went to the store to see if that beer was removed, and it was. There were other Stone brands on the shelf that were too old and they remained on the shelf. Apparently the Stone beer rep will remove only the specific brand that is reported and ignore the other old brands on the shelf?

Cheers!

 

I would add beware of singles. In my personal experience this seems to be an avenue out for the retailer and distributor. For my birthday in August my awesome wife went with a friend and picked out a dozen beers from a large store she thought I'd like. Every single one was over a year old and not drinkable- all were ipas, hopped lagers...

 

So the 3-tier distro system gets us beer from... lots of people. However, I think the 3-tier system lends itself to a "risk transference" mindset on the part of the brewer: "It's not my problem, it's the distributor". Only the big brewers ($) who can work with the distributor to (potentially) pull bad product will skate out of this situation... as long as there are date-checking BAs out there.

 

Don't look a gift horse in the mouth!?!



Cheers!

 

Maybe some cajoling could be helpful here!?!

https://www.morebeer.com/articles/Why_Homebrew_Beer

Cheers!

 

Only 5 or 6 months old and flat? I've opened 5 year-old beer that retained their carbonation -- how were these beers sealed?

 

If I found a 6pk of Victory Old Horizontal on a dusty shelf, I'd still buy it.
I almost never drink IPA 's so I never look for dates.
It usually takes me long enough to filter through the vast selection of stuff that I don't want to drink to find what I do like to drink. I'll be damned if I'm going to try to find a date code & figure out how to decipher it.
I really don't care that much.
If the beer tastes off, I'll look for more information, but by then it's too late anyway, so I'll just suck it up and drink it.
Thankfully that rarely happens.
Around here, most beer distributers put their out of date/code beers in the back of the store on the discount rack for people looking for a good deal on not so fresh IPA's.
Every one in a while I'll find a hidden gem in there, like Petrus.
Then again Pa has strict rules on our of code beers in retail establishments.
At the Pub I worked, the distributor reps would come in regularly and check and rotate stock if something is a slow mover, I'd use it for "cooking" in the kitchen.
I pickled lots of liver.

 

Or

Or, the store put the beers out after the rep had left.

 

Those old beers were already there when I sent my report to Stone. I was curious to see if when the rep showed up to remove the old Enjoy By beers if he would make the effort to review the other products on the shelf and to remove the old products. The 'answer' to that was no.

I personally stopped buying Stone beers afterwards because as a company they lost creditably to me.

Cheers!

 

People who don’t know that they should check for a packaging or best-by date probably also won’t even be aware that the beer doesn’t taste quite as good as it should. Unlike expired food, which can make us sick or even kill us (and therefore it’s the seller’s responsibility to take it off shelves), old beer will just taste oxidized, stale, or unbalanced. So yes, I agree that it’s on the consumer to check dates and should choose not to buy old product if that is an important factor to them.

I would love to see beer sellers provide markdowns on old product (say 15% or more), but I doubt most of them would bother to do that.

 

If I see beer that’s cheap or on sale I automatically assume it’s out of date. That being said, I’m not particularly concerned about freshness as long the product is refrigerated.

 

Check out BA forum "Is Beer Returnable?" It's not surprising that things don't get returned. Victory can't be sure that it's even legal to reimburse a customer, depending on the jurisdiction. It might not even be legal for the retailer to reimburse. Also, in Oregon at least, a retailer can return items to the wholesaler only in limited circumstances. and has to file paperwork to get permission from the authorities.

 

As a manager of a liquor store here in central MN, I have to chime in.

We work hard to make sure that our beer is within date. My AM and I do something called "The Purge" on a regular basis to get out of date beer off the shelf and clearance priced to get it out of the store. It seems like we've been getting close date/out of date product from the distributors. I remember seeing a product in a recent purge, and remembered getting it in a couple of weeks before we purged.

We take having fresh product seriously. I know a lot of places don't, but we do. That's what we do to make sure those who enjoy beer get a fresh product.

 

I passed on 3 month old SN Torpedo bottles today. It's getting harder to find fresh six packs these days but now it is easy to grab fresh single 16 oz cans.