Double Nickel in NJ (December 2015)

I'll try the Pils when I see it. I've had the Vienna, and it was okay, but essentially 2nd tier (B+ at best) stuff- not on the same level as Von Trapp, imo.

 

The Double Nickel cans have been in central Jersey for quite a while now - I was a big fan of both the pilsner and the Vienna but, lately, the stock just hasn't moved in my local stores. Pretty sure the last time I checked the dates on the pilsner (on the "warm" shelves) they were canned in January, and still the old label design not the new one (below - of which I've only seen the Vienna):

Sorta dull "generic" looking label (I kinda like the originals better) - they should take a hint from the Silver Dime Beer labels of old...

 

Picked up a can of the Autopilot “NE Pale” the other day and it was decent. Not great but certainly drinkable. One huge gripe though- no canning dates!! Why is it they can stamp the bottom of the can with a hash tag but can’t put the canning date? This alone makes me avoid their hoppy beers unless I know they just dropped. DATE YOUR CANS!

 

Auto Pilot was released on June 22

 

Yeah I knew it was recently distro’ed. Only reason I even grabbed a single can. But I’m saying if you can go through the trouble of stamping the bottom of your can with a hashtag (#WheelsUp in this case) you can date the can as well. Quite annoying to see a hashtag and not a date.

 

I'm in total agreement with the stamping of cans. I pass up more than I buy because of the lack of dates

 

All the "Core Series" Double Nickel cans I see (which are the only ones I do see) are dated -

but, as I noted above and as the cans show, they're all also 6 months old.

Are they self-distributing? If not, who are their wholesale distributors in NJ?

 

Not sure who distributes them but ironically enough that’s the same location where the hashtag was You’d think it would be more important to date all of these limited hoppy 16s they have been pumping out recently. Maybe they are and Autopilot wasn’t for whatever reason.

 

it's a catch-22

people don't want to buy non-dated cans.

people don't want to buy cans that were dated 6 months ago.

 

Not wanting to buy 6 month old beer is not on the consumer. Maybe there's a faction that won't buy 6 week old beer, but it's not large enough to warrant undated cans- that ultimately comes down to a supply issue.

 

Well, there is option (C) - Fresh Beer - which many people do want to buy.

 

buy beer when you see it? I'm sure the brewery isn't going to buy back beer from the local liquor store and the liquor store isn't going to buy MORE beer from a brewery if they have a bunch of their beer sitting already.

or DN needs to reduce the amount of beer they're distro-ing to an area, do better marketing, and better rep management in regards to the issues BS had at their facility.

for reference, I am definitely on the side of A. i want dates on my distro-ed cans and B. I'm not buying 6 month old beer. However, I can see the jam that DN has here and why they're not dating all cans.

 

I do - if it is fresh.

The industry standard (granted - a standard frequently not lived up to) is for the brewer (in the case of a self-distributing brewery*) or for their wholesale distributor to pull old, out-of-code stock off the shelves and replace it with fresh stock.

* Legal in NJ, but no one seems to know if DN does or, if not, which distributor(s) they use.

ADDENDUM - Looks like Ritchie & Page (AB house) distributes Double Nickel in some central Jersey counties. It's not uncommon in such a case for other independently-owned AB houses in NJ to also carry the same brand. (There is an AB-Owned AB wholesaler in NJ, in which case such a beer is typically handled by a different distributor.)

 

given how much of a pulling of teeth exercise it is to get distro-ed NJ breweries to refund customers for infected/off batches of beer, I can't really imagine any of these NJ self-distro breweries pulling old stock.

side note their website is absolutely useless. So who really knows how their beer is distributed, they don't even provide information on where you can FIND their beer.