Can one tell which AB brewery a given beer was bottled at?

I don't know how to tell, but you'd think AB would want to cut shipping costs as low as possible and that would mean using the closest brewery.

 

A quick Google search turned this up:

Budweiser Launches ‘Track Your Bud'
http://www.anheuser-busch.com/index.php/budweiser-launches-track-your-bud/

 

AB and MillerCoors codes for the actual brewery. :


For AB, it's the first letter after the numerical bottling date.

For MC it's the second and third digit in the second line of the code (first line is the pull date), after a letter representing the day of the week (A=Monday). Also works for Pabst products brewed at MC breweries.

 

How can you tell when a Sierra Nevada beer is made in CA or NC? Drinking a Nooner Pilsner right now.

 

Budweiser tap handles sometimes have where it was brewed at on the handle. Good bet your bottles come from same place

 

Damn, @jesskidden is just hitting homers here!

 

I just checked the Torpedo in my fridge out of curiosity; being in NY, I would have expected them to be from Mills River, but they were actually from Chico. @sierranevadabill, what dictates which beers are brewed where?

 

This will come in handy the next time I drink 11 budweisers and need someone to blame my hangover on! Up yours, Trenton!

 

I still haven't seen any Sierra Nevada brew from Mills River in NJ, have you?

 

One would think but AB shut down the bottling line in Newark a few months ago and only cans and kegs there. We can still buy bottles anyway.
http://www.northjersey.com/news/business/anheuser-busch-announces-60-nj-jobs-cuts-1.1228826

 

I think I have - but, off hand, can't remember specifically. Gotta say that down here in the Shore Point and Hub City SN distro territories, I often don't get past the bottled on date to read the brewery code since the beer is often too old for my money. Sierranevadabill discussed the situation in a previous post.*

Only just found more [Chico] Nooner 12 pks that weren't canned at the end of December a few weeks ago.

EDIT- (which I now noticed you "Liked"...but others might want to read it ).

Yeah, a retailer friend of mine has noted that NJ's been getting some packages of AB's flagship brands from Baldwinsville for quite a while.

Still surprised at ending bottling in Newark (AB's second oldest brewery and their first outside of St. Louis) - when I first heard "shutting down a bottling line" I figured it was some small line - 7 oz. or quarts, or something - not their only bottling line. There was a lot of speculation about the closing of a brewery to eliminate some excess capacity after InBev took over but it was usually around their smallest, in NH. But, apparently, NH is more modern and flexible. And the Newark site's real estate value is probably a consideration, being across Rt. 1 from Newark Airport.

 

Like asking what hillside your Gallo was grown on.

 

The brewery in Newark has the capacity to brew 10,000,000 barrels a year. They don't brew that much now but it still must be brewing 6 or 7,000,000 barrels.

 

The US industry average is around 53% of all beer is canned - it peaked at 60% in the early 90's and had been going steadily down (48% in 2003/4) until the canning boom and it's been up slightly the last few years. Bottles account for 37% with the remaining 10% kegged. Given AB's ~50% of the market, I'd expect they'd be pretty close to the industry average.

Oh, for a day or so. Both Miller and Coors closed/sold breweries (Fulton, NY, Tumwater, WA, Memphis, TN) in the recent past few decades and there wasn't much of a ripple outside local stories about job loss. BUT, I didn't say AB was closing Newark - only that it wasn't really a good sign, and non-brewing aspects like the value of the real estate are very real considerations in such cases.

AB's website for "Brewing Operations" (since redesigned with a much less informative list of brewery facts) in 2011 put Newark's capacity at 7.5m bbl/yr - making it the third smallest (after Merrimack, NH and Fairfield, CA). Today the "Fact Sheet" for Newark lists only the number of truckloads shipped out a day - 90. Merrimack, with a 2011 capacity of 3.5m bbl/yr shipments is listed at 100 trucks/day and upstate NY's Baldwinsville (2011 = 7.6m bbl., so then essentially the same size as Newark) is shipping twice as many truckloads as Newark - 180.

Also, the last new (acquired) product Newark got appears to have been Rolling Rock (a beer that is probably predominantly bottled rather than canned) while NY and NH are brewing Bass Ale and the Goose Island & Blue Point brands (respectively). I don't think Newark is set up for top fermentation.