The Bruery White Chocolate

Look more carefully, I think there should be a date etched in the bottle.

 

The Bruery did not always bottle date. If I remember correctly that started sometime last year.

 

I stand corrected. 2013 was my first year in RS, and I just remembered noticing it on some of the bottles.

 

I have a few of the 2012 bottles at home. I can post a pic of the label later tonight once I get home from work.

 

The 2013 does indeed say 2013 edition to the right, towards the top of the label. Most of the 2013 lines were etched in the bottle neck too. 2012 had no date marking at all.

 

Yeah 2013 Edition says 2013 Edition and 2012 does not. I remember searching to figure out which bottle we had at home too a while ago.

 

2012 has more of a cream / glue color to the wax where the 2013 is bright white

 

We opened a 2012 and a 2013 at a tasting friday . The 2013 was infected like we suspected . The 2012 was delicious . And the wax was grayish on the 2012 .

 

The 2012 version recommends aging for 5 years. The 2013 only for 2. As other have noted, it should have said not to age more than 2 weeks.

 

Has someone created a masterlist for Bruery bottles/labels? I would be nice to be able to reference it for dating bottles of some of their other beers, i.e. that label designs of Black Tuesday over the years.

 

It is most likely a 2012. They started putting years on them in 2013 I think.

 

I had a super fresh bottle of 2013 and it tasted fine. I just found another one in my cellar. Just curious, do you know if the entire batch of 2013 was infected, or is there a chance it might have been spared? I will open it soon to find the results, but it's just a shame since I actually enjoy this beer sans infection.

 

They actually did a recall of the 2013 batch. In the note that they passed on they said "White Chocolate you may also recall this year did not taste as it did in the previous year when it was first released. While this beer has remained stable and passed our sensory process, it's not what we hope for in future years of White Chocolate. We offered store credit for those who purchased the beer and did not enjoy it. For next year's release, we'll be choosing batches of White Oak Sap that have the richer, sweeter characteristics we all enjoyed in the 2012 release."

So it might not have been infected per se, but it also never really had the aging quality of the 2012 batch in the first place.

I actually didn't buy any of the 2013 version, I had a lot of the 2012 and always saw this as one of the novelty beers that the Bruery seems to brew too many of these days IMO.

That said the 2012 is aging really well and have always enjoyed it when I open a bottle.

 

Well, I opened the 2013 bottle on Wednesday and it was unpleasantly sour. Down the drain!