Does it have a batch number or date anywhere? BA reviewers mention "batch 1 May 2020". Maybe someone wanted to disguise it's age.
Nope, it says that on the other side of the back label. While it's a little old, I reckon it should be fine for a malt-forward, mixed fermentation beer like this.
I actually have another bottle of Jester King and that has the ABV in that spot. Can anyone confirm that it's the same with this bottle? Why would anyone black out the ABV though? Kinda weird...
Yeah, I don't know where along the distribution chain that that happened, but it is deeply suspicious. Did the beer taste like liquid hushpuppies? (fried Southern balls of cornbread, and they can be great).
I just found three more pictures of the back label on Untappd and they've all been blacked out in the same spot, so it looks like this isn't an isolated incident. Maybe it was done at the brewery because there was a misprint on the label or something... I haven't opened it yet, by the way.
If it was wrong, it'd violate US Labeling laws. Of course, the chances of the Feds discovering the error are remote since only a tiny fraction of beers are randomly sampled by the TTB.
I remember this happening with one of Tonewoods beers once. They actually put stickers with the correct abv over the incorrect one instead of just crossing off. Going back a few years now but I have seen it happen.
I can actually confirm that this was done at the brewery. I knew I had seen this on a JK bottle before, but I couldn't recall if it was Cornbread Kvass specifically. Your post however inspired me to go back to my picture archive. I typically just take a picture of the front of the label, but lo and behold, in this specific case the label was tilted just enough to see the black line you also described. I had purchased this beer directly from the brewery back in July of this year. As everyone else indicated this is typically the area where JK lists the ABV so I'm fairly certain that's what was being hidden, and as others have indicated I imagine it may be due to a slight inconsistency between what was printed and the actual ABV -- maybe they had the ABV listed from a previous batch? Though the variations in ABV are typically pretty small between batches, I've also seen their batches vary as much as 2-3% (e.g. Sing-Along Death Match went from 5.6% for batch 1 to 8.4% for batch 2) so that's certainly a possibility. P.S. I really enjoyed this beer and hope you do as well!
