"Born on" or "Best before"

I still like Deschutes "best after" dates

 

At first I thought that you were kidding about the “best after” date but with some web searching I found:

“While superb now, the Abyss is one of the stouts that benefits most from cellaring -- in fact, Deschutes prints a "Best After" date on each bottle dated a year after packaging. Over time, the harsher edges of the brew will soften, allowing old aromas and flavors to merge while new ones appear. You should be able to find bottles of Arizona shelves beginning this week, so buy a second bottle to try at this time next year, and see if you can find yourself in the abyss.”

That is indeed cool!

I have only had Abyss once (on draft) so I have never seen a bottle of it.

Cheers!

P.S. Another beer that I think should have a one year "best after" date is Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout. I just recently purchased two 4-packs of this beer and I will be aging them for at least one year. Brooklyn Black Cholocate Stout is just too boozy for me when it is fresh.

 

I loathe 'best by' dates. They are useless. And beer should be required to have a clearly visible bottled on/born on/canned on date. Although then I'd find out that half the IPA's I drink were bottled 5 months ago and I'd have to pass on them

 

We use Best By (based on shelf life and the bottling data) on our products here and it doesn't give anyone any idea of when the product was actually packaged. So a product bottled today would have a Best Before date of 10/15/13. It is a PITA for us because it is more difficult to code trace the product. However, we had a lot more consumer confusion when we used to use bottled on dates (easy for us with the data and time stamp) - for our stuff, people who don't work here have absolutely no clue about shelf life.

Either way has its flaws and I'm not sure which is better - both would be ideal, I reckon. Certainly anything is better than none (which seems to be the majority on beer).

 

What confused customers about bottled on dates? Does your average customer even look at dates on beer bottles?

 

"both would be ideal" That is the answer right there!

Cheers!

 

Unfortunately, our product isn't beer.... The confusion is because consumers could see the bottled on date, but they had no context. So we'd get calls saying "I bought this bottle on..." wanting to know if is still good (safe, not spoiled, whatever) to consume. Customer doesn't know we have a nine month shelf life (which communication could resolve), but they assume we know what we're talking about when we say "best by" - they don't know when it was bottled, but they don't care, you know? It is arbitrary because the product is still perfectly safe to consume, but probably won't be at its "best" for various attributes when it is 12 or 14 months old. Not a safety issue - a quality issue and one label claim issue on Vitamin C - and when product is on shelf beyond best buy date we scurry through the system and find it all (well, most of it) to make sure it gets returned via the distributors.

Milk, meats, poultry, and I think even eggs have best buy dates - if you put a packaged on date, nobody would have a clue whether it was good or not. Doubt that everybody knows the shelf life of all those kinds of products, and that gets into stuff that CAN make you sick or dead.

Obviously beer is different, but before I started learning here on BA, I had no idea I wanted an IPA as fresh as I could get it and some stouts or big Belgians could hang around a bit. So to the average consumer the value of a bottled on date is questionable. I don't think we are average consumers here - we know just enough to be dangerous

 

Both.

 

Replying to Hanzo's question about consumer confusion with bottled on dates... Had to do work for a few minutes and missed the editing time window...

Correction - that should say "I have this bottle that says it was made on..." the rest was pretty much ok...so consumers knew when it was made, but had no idea when the product was past prime.

 

That's one of many reasons why I love Great Divide.
It's so damn easy to find the bottling date.
It's like, "yo dog, I'm right here".

 

Too bad I saw a few bottles of Fresh Hop Pale Ale at a liquor store last week that were bottled in August...it crushed me

 

I see the same thing, but that's not Great Divide's fault.
At least you get to make an informed decision.

 

Born on/Bottled makes so much more sense than "best by". There are so many variables between bottling and drinking that will affect the quality and taste of a beer.

 

That makes a good point, actually. If there was a "best buy" date, then would it be Great Divide's fault? It is for us...or at least that is how we treat it.

 

Bells doesn't put a best by date on their beers. They put a batch number and bottling date on their beers.

 

Oh I know. I excitedly picked it up, rotated the bottle and saw the August date, then sadly put it back on the shelf. Luckily a 4 pack of Hoponius Union that was bottled 2 days prior saved my trip

 

Who uses Born On? I don't like that at all. I like Bottled On and Canned On dates.

 

My point was, Great Divide makes it so easy to see the bottling date, unlike many breweries where you have to hold a bottle at an angle in the right light to see it. Additionally, it remains visible even after bottles are handled by many would be consumers, unlike other breweries where the ink/paint/whatever it is has been wiped off the glass bottle.

 

I see "sell by" dates on those products, not "best by". the product is still perfectly good for another week or so after that date, much longer if meat and it's frozen after taken home.

 

Word Mark BORN ON
Goods and Services IC 032. US 045 046 048. G & S: beer.
FIRST USE: 19960722.
FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 19960722
Filing Date March 7, 1996
Registration Number 2083340 Registration Date July 29, 1997
Owner (REGISTRANT) Anheuser-Busch, Incorporated CORPORATION One Busch Place St. Louis MISSOURI
Type of Mark TRADEMARK