How important are Freshness Dates to you?

Short answer is no.

Longer answer is something I posted in 2014:

"My guess is that your beer was canned on July 29. 2014 and Sly Fox is using a 5 month best by timeframe for that brand of beer.

Victory uses a 5 month best by timeframe for a number of their beers (e.g., Prima Pils, HopDevil, etc.)."

Cheers!

 

Surly Abrasive doesn’t age well at all, and at eighteen bucks a 4 pk no thanks, I might bite on Furious if it was under 2 months old, less inclined in the summer knowing that between Minneapolis and your store it’s sitting at whatever temp for those two months, a very high probability sitting in a hot warehouse as well.

Sorry for spelling my one character stopped working, the other numbers are ok .

 

Important to establish a cutoff point. I have had doppelbocks and stouts that are 6+ months past their freshness date and they still tasted great. I would not want to buy a NEIPA or pale ale that old.

 

Would you have preferred a wet shelf?

 

If I see "Citra" or "Mosaic" on the vessel, that bad boy better be 3 weeks or younger or I'm strolling on by to something else.

 

I think a pretty important point about freshness on this too is if we're dealing with a small to medium sized brewery, delivering consistently fresh beer to their local market and/or specific outside markets is paramount and venturing too far outside of that fast tends to result in beers sitting on shelves for longer or going out of code. That's down to more known factors like decreased name recognition in an area where it wasn't distributed previously and the established local competition, to factors such as price point and lower guarantee of freshness that have to do with logistic/distribution realities.

 

The only time I don't check the date codes is if it's something I know was just released and put on the shelf. There are a couple bottle shops in town with great selection and turn over, but that doesn't mean everything in the cooler is fresh. (If they'd throw a couple bucks at me I'd be happy to go through the shelves and pull the older stuff aside for them.)

 

Citra isn’t a hardy Hop , I think it falls off much faster than others. I’m critical on dates because we do get MBC beers here 15 days old sometimes, or recently Stone IPA under 10 days old. I’ve got no reason to buy over 30 day old hoppy beers.

 

Pretty simple for me, if there is not a date then I don't buy. If there is a date and it is a NEIPA I will usually buy if canned date is less than 5 weeks ago. I don't know why all brewers don't make their canned date apparent. Feel it's in there own best interest to do so, since many just buy without regard to freshness and drink a new beer that is past it's prime and never buy again. In he past I would see a new to me beer and buy without regard to date. Poured out many expensive beers as I found them undrinkable. NoMo!

 

I generally try to get as fresh as possible, but the only style I have a hard stop date for are New England IPAs.

I will not even consider purchasing a NE IPA unless there is a canned date. And my cut off is 1 month.

I've had at least a couple of NE IPA brands that take a nose dive in quality after two weeks.

 

Best by dates are useless without knowing when it was packaged. Packaged dates only and let me decide when it is 'Best By' And if there isn't a date, I don't buy it. Periodt

 

I check it no matter what. Sometimes I don’t want a stout that’s aged. I want that acidity. I always check

 

Assuming it is "packaged on" dates we're talking about, they're very important. If it's a beer that is better very fresh I want to know how very fresh it is. If it is a beer that ages well I want one that is fresh so I can find its taste at that point, and if it is one I plan to age I want to know when it was packaged so I can know how long it's been aged. Always for every beer I want to know the package date.

 

Does anyone know what a date coder adds, as far as cost, to a packaging line? I'm still trying to figure out why any brewer, or mobile canner, wouldn't want to have this info on their package.

Not only is there the issue of consumers wanting the info, there's also the issue of tracing issues with QC. If I call a brewery and tell them I drink brand x all the time but the last 6 pack I got tasted like butter or was sour or was flat, how are they supposed to act on that feedback if there is no coding on the package?

 

I've never gotten into the habit of checking, because the first several years after I got into craft, I drank mostly stouts. Now that I drink IPAs too, I still don't think to check. Funny thing - the first time in years that I checked a date was yesterday when buying an Orval for the upcoming Orval online tasting, and I was checking it to verify it wasn't too new. It was 11 months old, would have preferred more age, but wasn't going to drive around for a slightly older one.

 

If your not picky you can probably find 11 month IPAs at any Total Wine. That’s not a trick.

 

While the top-rated "Depends on the Style" rating is true and my vote as well it's more complicated.
It certainly depends on the style, but almost more importantly, it depends on how much hops are in the beer. The more hops, the more it matters.
The hops are time sensitive, but the malts while stand the test of time. The classical teaching is sure, drink an IPA fresh, but you can cellar age a stout. So while a stout might seem that it ages well, if it showcases the roastiness and hops, then it would be a better beer to find fresh. On the other hand, a beer that is more malt focused may stand the test of time much better.
Nevertheless, I've never been steered wrong by drinking a beer fresh, so I'd always advocate for that. However, I recognize the practical difficulty of often times finding an IPA already 4-6+ months old on the shelves.
I'll consider an IPA <3 months old as fresh, 3-6 as adequate, and over 6 as old. Maybe that's too generous and NEIPA snobs will cringe at that. ...But that is the retail market in the midwest that I live in.

 

This popularly current concept that ONLY "hoppy beers" need to be fresh ignores the other characteristics of beer that also are affected by time on the shelf, as noted in Dalgliesh's famous graph.

So, those low IBU AAL's and porters and stouts and other beers people are happy to buy well past traditional shelf life period are still going to be different than they were fresh. (Just makes sense, too, since if they weren't, people wouldn't cellar certain beer styles).

There is a reason why the pre-craft era US breweries gave their low IBU adjunct lagers relatively short shelf life period of 2-3-4 months (and, of course, most still do).

So, if I'm buying a beer that's costing me $10-12 a four- or six-pack, rather than being just "commercially acceptable", damn right I want it as fresh as possible.

As for this concept of "shelf aging" of beers that are typically cellared - that ignores the fact that even beers in brown bottles when exposed to typical store fluorescent lighting, either on the room temp. shelves or in coolers, for extended periods can become lightstruck.

"Classical" is the wrong term - that concept only became prevalent in the last couple of decades (along with a lot of new hop varieties). As often noted in these IPA threads, the quantity of hops as well as dry hopping in the original IPA's and other hoppy styles were used, in large part, for their preservative qualities as well as flavoring.

In the early 1980s when it was the last US India Pale Ale being brewed, Falstaff noted for their version of Ballantine India Pale Ale: "A six month aging period prolongs shelf life. It will last a good long time if handled with care (GABF 1982)" and, the following year wrote it "has a very long shelf life if properly stored (GABF 1983)".

Even the early 2000's label for Dogfish Head's 90 Minute Ale said:

 

I certainly have to real expertise here, but I’ve stopped intentionally aging beers for longer lengths of time. Here I’m talking typically stouts, and I have one Rare sitting in the box cool, simply because I don't feel like drinking it yet. I think we’ve all experienced stouts with adjuncts like coffee or coconut fade to basically nothing in say 5-6 months or so. I’m of mind that KBS is best fresh not aged, and BC is still pasteurized I suppose so there’s no bottle conditioning happening, so drink them when you want too, sitting two years will change it, but it won’t necessarily for the “better”, just a bit different. Their stouts with adjuncts drink them fresher than not before they fade. Just my opinion based off what I’ve drank over the years.