Dusty bottles inside a variety 12 pack - got me thinking....

Discussion in 'Beer Talk' started by Providence, Mar 15, 2014.

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  1. Providence

    Providence Pooh-Bah (2,652) Feb 24, 2010 Rhode Island
    Pooh-Bah Trader

    I bought a variety 12 pack of Cape Ann Brewery's offerings. Four each of their Amber Lager, Kolsch and IPA. The Amber Lager and IPA looked just fine, but all four of the Kolsch bottles had a good bit of dust on them. I am assuming that when the brewery made up these 12 packs they just chucked whatever they had lying around into the box. That got me thinking, how are variety 12 packs made up? I buy Brooklyn Brewery's variety 12 a few times per year and all the beers are always just fine. That makes me think that they have a set number of bottles from each batch of beer that are dedicated to the 12 pack. But what about smaller breweries, that don't have the same resources as Brooklyn? Do they just wait around until they have an abundance of older beer and throw together some 12 packs? Probably not, but these dusty Kolsch got me wondering (Side note, "Dusty Kolsch" is a great name for something. A beer, a brewery, a professional wrestler, etc.).

    Any thoughts?

    EDIT: Neither the bottles, nor the box they came in had a date. As for taste, the Kolsch was a bit stale, but perhaps I was just assuming it was going to taste stale based on it's dusty exterior.....
     
    #1 Providence, Mar 15, 2014
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  2. LeRose

    LeRose Grand Pooh-Bah (4,423) Nov 24, 2011 Massachusetts
    BA4LYFE Society Pooh-Bah Trader

    We buy the Troegs anthology packs sometimes and now that I look, the entire case has a best consumed by date. That is a little strange, but we have never had any issues. The date seems to match the shortest shelf life beer, roughly speaking. I have the empty boxes, so can't verify the bottle dates.

    I suppose it could be a way to move extra volume that is sitting around. You would hope the brewery pays attention to age. Making the pack carries some cost and I assume there might be some distribution cost. The idea is to still make a profit. It would be a risk to reputation to move old inventory this way, but I could see it happening.

    My company does variety packs, but they are to order by the customer. We will pull from production runs or use up inventory. But our shelf life is pretty well defined. It could definitely happen that some product approaching the end of its days could land in a mixed case. I would hope our sales and logistics people aren't sitting around saying we gotta dump all this old crap...lets do a variety pack, but these days I have my doubts.

    Dusty Kolsch...I'd go with headliner at Foxy Lady....
     
    #2 LeRose, Mar 15, 2014
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  3. Alexmc2

    Alexmc2 Pundit (808) Jul 29, 2006 New Hampshire

    So I used to work on a bottling line for a regional brewery that does mix packs. What we did was to package one each of the flavors of any given mix pack into open 12 pack mix packs on any particular bottling day. Then you would repack by hand, mixing all the flavors into the proper ratio once you had enough of each of the given flavors. The date on the outside of the package would be based on the earliest expiration of the bottles within.
     
    #3 Alexmc2, Mar 15, 2014
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  4. MostlyNorwegian

    MostlyNorwegian Pooh-Bah (2,236) Feb 5, 2013 Illinois
    Pooh-Bah

    As others who work on the brewery side have already chimed in.
    Mix packs are annoying, and time consuming to put together because you are doing them almost entirely by hand which also ties up a pallet jack for most of the day. If you have cans already four packed. You will have to remove the four pack, and if the boxes are sealed, they will need to be opened and recycled. The circle goes on.
     
    #4 MostlyNorwegian, Mar 15, 2014
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  5. rc51sport

    rc51sport Initiate (0) Feb 25, 2013 North Carolina

    You would think they be able to wipe the dust off those 4 bottles. They are obviously handling them already.
     
    #5 rc51sport, Mar 15, 2014
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