Taking personal responsibility for old beer purchases

The problem of stale beer in the market is difficult to solve. Basically, there are too many beers on the market for the system to process. It's as if each consumer is looking for a custom-made beer. JHorzempa has a solution: homebrew. Another is direct purchase from the brewery. I'd say that it's impossible for the brewers and distributors to "right-size" the production and shipments because the market isn't stable enough to predict sales. There are too many one-offs, variations, and seasonals for a rational distribution system to handle. Unprecedented variety comes with unavoidable costs.

 

Curious about how this works. Just as it’s the consumer’s responsibility to check dates on products before deciding whether to buy, as a seller do you regularly check dates on incoming inventory from the distributor to make sure it’s reasonably fresh and, if it’s not, do you have the right to refuse it? Seems like distributors could be pawning off old stock on sellers and that doesn’t seem fair if you have no choice but to accept it.

 

Every store that sells alot of craft beer needs someone like you.

 

My AM takes the lead in that. He is very important to the effort.

 

As I discussed in post #5: "But as I discussed in the above paragraph it is the brewery who likely has the most 'exposure' to being blamed for poor product."

I suppose the folks at Victory would state it is unfair for the end customer to blame them for this situation but...

Cheers!

 

We can refuse if we get outdated/close date product delivered. The main problem is it isn't always easy to see the dates on the packages. Sometimes it is born on date. Sometimes it's best by. Sometimes it's not on the package, and you have to open to see the dates on the cans. When you're getting a lot of product in, it's not always possible, or easy, to check every date.

Sometimes the distributor does a good thing. We have a RTD product that we sell a lot of. We weren't getting it for awhile. The product was coming into the distributor close date/out of date, and they sent it back to the manufacturer.

 

Have you ever conducted (or thought about conducting) a thorough inspection of the beers you are receiving from the various wholesale distributors?

I became friendly with the owner of a craft beer bar and he educated me that one of the area wholesale distributors was notorious for sending old beer. He made it a point to be at his business (e.g., in the morning before the bar opened) to inspect every single case of beer coming off that wholesale distributor's delivery truck and reject old beer. And he commented that it was a significant proportion of the beers sent that he would reject. You would think that this business would get wise to not send him old product but apparently they never made the effort to 'tailor' their deliveries to not include old beer for him. Maybe they just took those old beers over to some other retailer(s) who didn't make the effort to check their deliveries?

I am uncertain whether "old" in the above is beer that is past code or close to being out of code.

Cheers!

 

Well I do plan on going to our Bud distributer, just finding a day when it will work is the issue. I know one of the owners of the Pepsi distributer and if I asked when he stops in I could get a tour. He did offer one to me when I was in the restaurant business.

 

I just gotta ask: what is your agenda for traveling to that wholesale distributor? Do you plan to have a 'sit down' discussion asking them to stop sending you old beer?

Cheers!

P.S. FWIW in my area Victory is distributed by an AB InBev wholesale distributor. I remember reading in the past that the then Victory owners (Bill Covaleski & Ron Barchett) often selected what they called AB houses to distribute their beers since they claimed they did quality work.

 

I was at a sister store this morning and they were checking in beer. Some of the Stone products were coming in a bit over a month before their best by date. He accepted them saying that they are the sale item next week, and needed the product for the sale.

It is a group effort. We're doing what we can to get a fresh product to our customers. We're not perfect, but we put the effort into that goal. A lot of places don't.

 

Kudos to you and your sister store.

We end consumers need more folks like you!

Cheers to you!!

 

I already relayed this story last week on WBADN, but this is a more appropriate thread.
I was in a store and checking dates on beers I was considering. A woman (a Karan) was near me and said very sternly "What are you going to touch and infect every beer in the store?".
I politely said that I don't by old beer, especially IPAs. But I added that I didn't think anyone was going to lick the can.
She did not respond, but the incident made pissed me off for days. Still mad now recounting the episode.

 

That is what I would have thought as well, but I was at a store in PA not long ago and was about to grab a 4 pack of SOS and noticed the date was 5 months old so I had to put it back. So disappointing, but goes to show that once something (even the best beers) have been in a distribution area for a while, nothing keeps fresh.

 

Just last week, a friend of mine was at a smallish brewery down near Baltimore. Let’s say it’s one of those “dime a dozen” breweries…makes ok beers but doesn’t stand out in anyway. He bought a DIPA 4 pack to go and sent me a text that the canned on date was 1/31/23 (yes almost 2 years old). I started a thread maybe 2 years ago warning people to even check dates on to-go beers at breweries as I experienced old stock many times from many different brewery taproom fridges. I guess it’s good they are refrigerated but still.

 

It's not my fault Inglewood Unified School District failed me and i can not read.

To add on to this :

Do we blame meat suppliers for "Managers Special" meat on shelves or rotting produce ?
Do you call the supplier to yell at them?


I don't

 

If you were rooting through the romaine lettuce, she might have had a point. Were you wearing a mask? That method of transmission is much more likely that hand contact to a surface.

 

I definitely check dates on beer, too many retailers and distributors carrying old stock. When I see seasonal beers from three years ago still on shelves of some bottle shops, I have to chuckle.

 

That story pisses me off too. Is this woman not aware that basically all fresh produce is just sitting out, being manhandled by God knows how many customers (and grocery store employees) before she selects a few fruits and vegetables to take home? Had it been me I would have been tempted to just tell her to fuck off—but I’m also not a good person.