The craft beer industry: beer quality problems

It's our distributors who don't want dated product at least according to the craft brewers who would talk to me about it. Of course that doesn't mean the small brewers are not complicit.

Frankly I think most of our distributors would be happier with just Bud-Miller-Coors and not even bother with this craft stuff.

 

Or they are told by their distributors not to date the product, and since the distributor is their primary customer....

And why don't they care to date?

Because customers keep buying their product even though they don't date.

If we didn't buy their beer they'd either go out of business or begin to date their beers.

 

I'm all for discounting dated beer - that's where my money will go when its a option.
Place I frequent has had some local mix 12 packs - Yazoo- Wiseacre - 5.50 - I'm cheap.
I'm sure all involved don't like that to happen though.

 

Not sure if people are seeing this in other places, but I feel that the overall quality of beer being produced in my area has gotten better recently. 3-4 years ago I'd say that half the new breweries opening in Colorado were serving beers with major (obvious) flaws. I'm not seeing that anymore. Newer places are serving better beers on day #1 and the places that are still open have typically righted their ship.

 

Why is date of production referenced more than a best by date?

Is there an industry standard that addresses when beer (any/all beer) is no longer fresh? Is AB's 110 days applicable to all styles?
If not, it will be incumbent on the end user to know the acceptable shelf life of various styles and do the calendar math for each style in order to determine 'freshness' based on the born on date.

Seems like it'd be easier on the end user to just pick up a can or bottle and see if the best by date is before or after the current date.

 

The industry lobbyist/lawyers that I know would be shocked, just shocked to think aging or close-dated beer is a problem, especially for their big brewery clients. Their main objective seems to be to protect franchise laws, limiting craft brewers capacity of brewing and self-distribute....anything that may chip away at the huge distributors continued dominance of markets.......In my opinion, a brewer that is slack about consistent quality will not thrive. I'm sure there are examples, but I cannot think of one around here.

 

Exactly, this ^^^

If you also want to put a "best by" date on it, I'm OK with that, but the date that said beer is packaged is sufficient.

 

Makes sense. There are probably many on this site (and others) who share your opinion and desire for a born on reference.
What I doubt (armed only with a gut feeling and no studies to support it), is whether most consumers share your desire to determine what's fresh and what ain't based on date of production....for whatever reason, juice ain't worth the squeeze, just not that into it, flighty and on to the next one, etc.

Granted, any individual has the capacity to build their own history for a given beer over time by using the production date as a benchmark for future purchases but, for reason mentioned above and likely others, I don't envision the bulk of consumers building that personal database.


Buds “Born On” campaign was short-lived in my mind; I vaguely remember it but don’t recall ever using it when I purchasing any of their products......BUT, correctly or not, I do think it inculcated in me a subconscious mindset that I didn’t need to be concerned about whether or not their product was “fresh”.
Maybe that's what BA is attempting with their campaigns....making the inverted bottle synonymous all that's good about beer. That's a better slogan, "Independent Craft, All That's Good About Beer".

For some, but I would not say for most.
Agree with putting both born on and best by, or a similar catering to both worlds.

 

If you are putting junk in the bottle to begin with, the packaging date or best by date is irrelevant. These discussions seem to go this way every time - it ends up about old beer on store shelves and there's no shortage of finger pointing to go 'round. Everybody has a share in it - brewers for brewing too much, distributors for not accepting responsibility, consumers for not caring (non-BA consumers, of course...).

And even though coding technology is cheap, there's still plenty of beer on shelves with neither a date, lot code, or anything else visible to the consumer. With no date (or other "mysterious" code) how does a brewer or distributor keep track? How would they manage a recall - oh...dumb question. That information has to be somewhere - on cases or a pallet tag - somewhere. Make it required that it is put it on the freakin' bottles/cans and be done with it once and for all. If it is a production date, we as consumers can decide whether a beer is fresh enough for us to purchase.

What about breweries that just make lousy beer? That should be of equal or greater concern. Both things combined - shit beer to begin with and no idea of freshness in the package - seems to me to be fatal combination that reflects badly on the entire industry, not just the offending breweries. Without dates on packages, I suppose you don't know if you are drinking a crappy beer because it's crappy, or if it is crappy because it's been sitting forever. How many people not on BA are gonna bother to find out or even know it makes a difference?

To me, a good part of the problem is people continuing to support breweries that put out sub-par products. I can think of two I visited recently that should not even bother turn the lights on in the morning, yet there they are. You can't legislate "quality" (which ends up being largely subjective at the end of the day) like you can legislate food safety - even if there were abundant training and resources, you can't make brewers brew a quality beer. If people keep buying, there's no incentive to change. I could follow every food safety requirement to the letter, but that doesn't mean I am putting out a "quality" product - just that I'm putting out a product that meets food safety standards. I can make the same crappy product to the same specifications every day - still doesn't mean anything re: "quality", just that it is consistent. Isn't that the argument we ourselves use? Bud is made under precise process control and beer produced at the array of Bud breweries is all "the same", but people say it's not a quality product.

Trade organizations certainly can promote "quality" - there are many in the food world who do just that by training, seminars, supporting research, etc. The BA seems to be accepting at least some of that responsibility, but they can only lead the horse to the bar, can't make it drink beer, so to speak. The upside down bottle carries little cache to begin with, and will never be linked with "quality". This can only be suggested, but not enforced.

I guess the freshness thing is an immediately visible part of the equation, but it works backwards from there, in my opinion. People have got to stop buying crap beer and they certainly need to stop buying OLD crap beer.

 

Bud and Miller. These lobbyists/lawyers are more likely to point at quality and freshness issues in the craft sector because Bud and Miller do a good job keeping beer in date. I was being a touch facetious, but the lobbyists I know work for the big guys protecting their interests like hawks. It is the most powerful lobby in this state.

 

Why not both? Something like either:

Best by __-__-____
THREE MONTHS AFTER CANNING
or
Bottled on __-__-____
DRINK WITH THREE MONTHS

That's how AB did it (granted, might be "too much math" for some folks ).

The "Born On" dating itself on Budweiser and some of the other AB brands lasted from 1996 to 2015. Before that, like many brewers, they used a form of Day of the Year (aka "Julian") dating within a longer code that also represented info such as the brewery, packaging line, etc.

 

Obviously the training in QC and general quality production methods should be expanded by BA. Another thing that I don't hear much about but that would seem to solve a lot of problems at once would be for the BA to help create and/or promote dedicated 'craft' distributors. They could create an internal rolodex of trusted distributors that follow best practices of inventory rotation, storage, and ooc management. They could also use their network of individual contacts to help create distributors who follow these best practices in any regions where none currently exist.

Beyond that I really do think it is in our hands as consumers. I make a point to avoid old stock and to contact breweries when I have a bad experience that I perceive to be a QC issue vs. just a bad beer issue. I recently contacted Rhinegeist about their Octoberfest beer because one out of the 6 pack was downright bad and I know them to make quality beer. Their 'chief science officer' got back to me promptly and thanked me for alerting them and told me that his guess was that it was related to some error in the canning line. I know that the brewery genuinely appreciated the heads up as it may have helped them fix a problem in their flow chart, and I as the consumer still have faith in their product in the future.

 

Everything else has a point but I want to make a point of this part. Quality inherently depends on the customer. It's giving the customer what they want.

You say that people are continuing to support breweries putting out subpar beer. But what that is I find often depends on a very subjective viewpoint.

There are a few breweries that I know of and their reputation on social media.

One produces primarily German styles, and they normally are quite good beers, few flaws if any.
Another produces a very standard lineup. Amber, pale ale, IPA, Saison... They are very good and well made beers.
The other produces a large number of beers, always coming out with new ones, many many IPAs and Sours on tap.

I find in the "craft beer community" only the third is considered to make "quality beers". The vast majority of the Sours taste like nothing more than straight acetic acid, often with herbs that clash with everything else. The other beers are completely inconsistent, lots of fusel alcohols, some astringency issues, and more.

But customers in the "craft beer community" think that different is the important aspect of a quality beer. They think that a brewery is low quality if they don't add all sorts of fruits or other flavorings in beers constantly.

So who is to really say what brewery is making subpar beer that should go under?

 

If people in the craft beer community don't know how to differentiate flawed beer from well made beer then they should think twice before proclaiming how great any particular brewery is. Believe me when I tell you that I understand what you're saying and see it first hand seemingly every day. Undereducated people claiming to know a lot/everything about something and putting people down for actually knowing something about that thing. Hooray for the internet!

 

Agreed 110%. This (off of a can of Lagunitas Super Cluster that I purchased today and is outstanding) does not meet that simple definition .....



..... now what in the fliggity flock am I supposed to do with that? I don’t want to buy a decoder ring, I just want to know if the beer I’m about to purchase is relatively fresh. This doesn’t meet that simple standard, IMHO.

But it’s pretty outstanding, especially when you consider it’s from Heineken and technically not subject to anything the Brewer’s Association espouses.

But I digress .....