Just had a random thought. Just because a brewery puts a bottled on date on their bottle does that mean we know it's fresh? Would there be a day that we see a Brewed On Date?
Well, how are you defining "brewed"? Like, when was the process started or when it was completed? I am assuming they bottle as soon as it's ready, so the dates would be roughly the same.
That day was back in the period immediately after Repeal: Lucky "Age Dated" Lager and Rainier Ale also dated their labels with the brewing date in that era (among others - but the Blatz is a nicer looking label). The public was concerned with "green beer" getting on the market at that time when the breweries were first ramping up after Prohibition, back when lagering times in the US were still in the "3 months" region. But, as noted above, "brewing date" has little relevance to freshness if the time the beer took to ferment and age/lager before packaging is unknown.
A bottled on date is the most certain way to determine freshness as it is not ambiguous or subjective like a best by date. I have seen plenty of beer come to the shelf already a month or two old so if that is what you mean, then you are correct.
A bottled on date is ambiguous unless you know which bottling line is in use at the brewey. Some lines are more efficient at removing oxygen and so can almost double the shelf life of an IPA, for example. So some IPAs are as just about as fresh at two months as some others are at one.
Bottling dates are a fair estimate...beer sitting in the tank is money lost. Most breweries bottle as soon as humanly possible as their production line volume is far more of a bottleneck (har!) to production throughput than bottle storage space. Every day that beer sits in the tank before being bottled backs up the rest of the process and keeps the product from reaching the market.
