Do you check for freshness?

I certainly didn't take it that way. I've had plenty of these conversations with retailers and supplier reps. I think open dialogue is beneficial to everyone because at the end of the day, it's a group effort. I want the retailer selling more of what I'm offering to them and I want to make sure I'm doing what's needed on my end to make that as easy as possible. Properly run retail shops with good oversight; i.e. beverage managers, helps everyone. As long as they know what they are doing of course! Have had plenty of experience dealing with people who categorically know nothing about what they are in charge of buying and managing. It's a headache for everyone and the salesmen who try to take advantage of this situation by forcing product on them that they clearly don't need or couldn't sell makes distributors look bad.

 

Never heard the term - what's a "chain state"? Is it the same as - or maybe the opposite of - a "Control State"?

 

A chain state is where you will find beer/alcohol within all grocery stores, "chain stores", etc and not have limitations regarding the number of license's given to each individual chain. Take for example Royal Farms. We have what seems like more stores each week opening up in the territory, but they are still restricted to the number of stores that can specifically sell beer. Ditto for grocery stores. We have a chain called "Food Lion" and not everyone sells beer. Only one does. A chain state would allow every single one to carry them. It changes the market drastically as you see less "mom and pop"/privately owned shops in chain states.

 

Gotcha. Yeah, in NJ, only two off-premises or bars w/o restuarant licenses are allowed per owner.

So the liquor store "chains" (Spirits Unlimited, Buy Rite, Bottle King, Joe Canal's) are usually co-ops using the same 'dba' name. The grocery store chains that sell alcoholic beverages are either the same sort of arrangement or, in the case of Wegmans, the liquor licenses are owned by individual family members, not the corporation. Quite a loophole.

Here's the receipt for my local "Wegmans Fine Wine & Spirits". JWG is Joan Wegman Goldberg

 

The wonkiness from state to state is truly mind-bogglingly to me sometimes. Two of the counties in my area are county controlled for liquor sales. A third county controls all alcohol.

 

Yeah, it's all due to the 21st Amendment's second section:

Which SCOTUS has come to interpret as giving states, in most cases, total control over alcohol sales within their jurisdiction. But at the time of Repeal, when there were still many states that were still Pro-Prohibition, it was seen as the only way to get the Amendment enacted.

 

Thanks for responding, that answers some of my questions and the comment about minimum cases and SKU's explains a lot.

This appears to be key.
Having the beer department run by someone who actually knows about beer and is able to form good personal relationships with suppliers.

Regarding knowledgeable managers; none of the grocery stores around here have “beer managers” at the store level anymore and beer section is handled by the general Beverage Manager.
Before she disappeared over a year ago, the beer manager at my Wegmans told me that all of the ordering went through regional and corporate and that she had no say in what was stocked.
A few years back 120 Minute suddenly appeared on the shelf of the other grocery chain (Weis). This beer & price point was unlike anything they had ever carried and I jokingly asked the Asst. Manager how they happened to have it. His response was a shrug and “we get what we get”.

 

No.

 

Way to kill a thread, man.

 

I like German beers, Weihenstephaner, Hofbrau, Warsteiner, etc. This may not be the right format to ask but here goes:

Since they came from Germany and some of the number codes mean little to me how does the freshness issue and imported beer in general go together?

 

Here's a thread that may have some answers for you:
https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/date-codes-for-imported-usa-german-beer.658248/

 

In general German import & fresh don't go together.
B. United imports some German beers in tanks and cans them here, but I've never seen anything about how old those beers are by the time they hit our shores.

German brewers have BB dates ranging from 12-15 months on their exports meaning they aren't exactly staying awake nights worrying about how quickly the beer gets here.
You should just assume that due to the nature of shipping logistics even a fresh new on the shelf German beer is approaching 6 months old.

 

Going to start checking dates after I picked up a 12er of ja post shift that was about a year old. I’m going to crack a second one today, but I thought the first one I opened was skunked

 

Whose turn is it?

 

Was at a grocery store last night looking at their large selection of interesting singles and found at least 4 beers that were packaged in 2020.

I ended up leaving with two 4 packs, kolsch and an oat stout, that were both less than 6 weeks in the can.

Always check

 

In the 70s, we always looked in the back of the cooler hoping to find a hidden gem. Most of the time we found mediocre oddballs (Peoples, Braumeister, Cascade, Einbock, A-1), sometimes an obscure import (Brown Red Eric), but once had a big payoff. Falstaff had purchased Ballantine brands about a year earlier when we found a Ballantine Newark-brewed Ale 16 oz can six pack. Powerfully good in all respects (especially aromatic and bitter), even if over its peak. The Falstaff brewed product didn't compare.

 

Could not agree more. "Best-by" dates are worthless and arbitrary. I would like a clear bottled/canned date so the consumer is informed and can judge the freshness.

 

I do, and have been since '09 when the Little Creatures Pale would change up the hop profile from batch-to-batch. Some batches were better than others. Nowadays LCPA is clear weak-tasting average beer, but I do check dates on the cans of Stomping Ground Pales. I will also check a dat on a can that erupts or is flat upon opening to know to steer clear of them in the future.

 

With those imports I so stupidly like date codes are the bane of my existence. At this point I just accept the beer is likely old.

When I can I will check, but some of those stamps might as well just be a serial number. There's no way I'm deciphering a date out of most of them.

 

Yet most every other packaged food and beverage used some form of "Best by" date coding and no one bats an eye or wants to know when Bessie was milked or their eggs were laid or their potato chips were fried. Pretty sure AB cited that fact as a reason why they switched from the annoying "Born on" dating.

As long as one knows the shelf life period a brewer's "Best by" date is based on, what difference does it make? And, yeah, they should clearly state that on their labels which ever dating method they use, like Bell's plainly stated "Shelf life - 3 months" on this can of Hopslam. Otherwise, how does one point out old beer based on a packaging date?

"This IPA was canned 9 months ago."
"Yeah, so? This German brewery says its beer is good for 15 months after canning."

And which ever method is used, that should also be clearly stated. "Was this beer stamped 01-31-22 canned 3 weeks ago or did it expire 3 weeks ago?"

You don't think brewers check on how their beers survive under typical warehouse and retail conditions? Granted, too many, especially importers/foreign breweries, base their dates on factors (shipping & distribution time, slower sales) other than freshness.
"That still tastes perfect." vs "Ah, good enough..."