[tommymorris]

Any thoughts on how to read the right side of this date code?

The left side seems to be expiration date March 2024. I am try to guess when the beer was brewed. It was beer #1 from my new Brewer’s Advent Calendar. March 2024 is a long way away. I’m not even wiki g to wait until Advent to drink the beer and I am definitely not waiting until 2024.

The beer tasted fine by the way.

[majorvices]

Just pulled this from web, not sure if it will help:

Andechs – DDDY

Augustiner – LDDD##YY## (L153072033 = L means nothing, 153rd day of 2020)

Ayinger – LYDDD (L8108 = L means nothing, 108th day of 2018)

Früh – DDDYY

Hacker-Pschorr – MM/YY (best before)

Hofbräu – LDDDY (L068P = L means nothing, 68th day, P is the 16th letter so 2016)

Paulaner (bottles) – MM/YY (best before)

Prof. Fritz Briem – DD-MM-YY

Rothaus – DD.MM.YY (best before)

Schlenkerla – None

Schneider – YY.DDD

Spaten – MM.YYYY (best before)

Spaten-Franziskaner – DD.MM.YYYY (best before)

Uerige – DD.MM (no year)

Weihenstephaner (bottles) – DWWY (7176 = 7th, 17th, or 27th day of the 17th week of 2016)

Weihenstephaner (cans) – MM.DD.YYY (best before)

Warsteiner – DD.MMM.YY (best before


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Thirsty_Monk]

Tell you the truth we really do not want our competitors and beer distributors to understand our date codes. It all has to do with shelf space in stores.

We use batch number.

[denny]

Tell you the truth we really do not want our competitors and beer distributors to understand our date codes. It all has to do with shelf space in stores.

We use batch number.

Very interesting

[majorvices]

I'm very leery of buying beers without clear package dates--not that I won't buy it. I just will often pass it up. Also, if you don't self distribute then you have too rely on the distributor to pull the product for you. In that case its important that the date codes are understood by the distro.

[RC]

Tell you the truth we really do not want our competitors and beer distributors to understand our date codes. It all has to do with shelf space in stores.

We use batch number.

This strikes me less as "interesting" and more as mildly deceptive. I would avoid buying beer from a brewery that did this. You are deliberately withholding information from the consumer that would inform their buying decision. But gotta chase that almighty dollar, amIright? God forbid you miss out on a sale of a 4-pack.

It would be great if you could identify your brewery so that I know to never buy your product if I am in a store that sells it.

[tommymorris]

Tell you the truth we really do not want our competitors and beer distributors to understand our date codes. It all has to do with shelf space in stores.

We use batch number.

This strikes me less as "interesting" and more as mildly deceptive. I would avoid buying beer from a brewery that did this. You are deliberately withholding information from the consumer that would inform their buying decision. But gotta chase that almighty dollar, amIright? God forbid you miss out on a sale of a 4-pack.

It would be great if you could identify your brewery so that I know to never buy your product if I am in a store that sells it.

Dang. It’s not that bad.

[RC]

Tell you the truth we really do not want our competitors and beer distributors to understand our date codes. It all has to do with shelf space in stores.

We use batch number.

This strikes me less as "interesting" and more as mildly deceptive. I would avoid buying beer from a brewery that did this. You are deliberately withholding information from the consumer that would inform their buying decision. But gotta chase that almighty dollar, amIright? God forbid you miss out on a sale of a 4-pack.

It would be great if you could identify your brewery so that I know to never buy your product if I am in a store that sells it.

Dang. It’s not that bad.

But why not just print a canned-on date? It's as easy as printing a batch number. And people who know beer know to look for a canned-on/bottled-on date. When I learn that a brewery deliberately withholds a canned-on date-print and instead prints gibberish literally intended to confuse the consumer--even though they could easily print the date, and please re-read Thirsty Monk's comment that they do NOT want people to understand their printed stuff--this strikes me as deceptive. I already avoid beers that have a Julian date printed on them--again, probably intended to confuse.

The sky will not fall, and the sun will still rise tomorrow. You are absolutely correct about those. But there is a HUGE difference between, say, 1-month old Sierra Nevada pale ale and 4-month old SNPA. HUGE. And as a consumer, I would like to know how old the beers are that are sitting on the shelf. Any brewery that thumbs their nose at this will not get my money, is all I'm saying.

[Thirsty_Monk]

@RC. Thank you for kind words. I appreciate that.

Now if you log in to the form from browser you will see where I clean, make beer, package it and sell it all by myself. Well I am lying to you. I got a sales person 6 years ago. But I can assure you that I have a knowledge how to sell beer in my area.

Now dispute your opinion there is much more people who are buying beer by brand and not by the date code.

Date code is for tracking purpose only for product recall obligations. It has nothing to do with consumers.

If you think there is anything about deception, you are mistaken.

Now get yourself a beer and have great day.

[RC]

@RC. Thank you for kind words. I appreciate that.

Now if you log in to the form from browser you will see where I clean, make beer, package it and sell it all by myself. Well I am lying to you. I got a sales person 6 years ago. But I can assure you that I have a knowledge how to sell beer in my area.

Now dispute your opinion there is much more people who are buying beer by brand and not by the date code.

Date code is for tracking purpose only for product recall obligations. It has nothing to do with consumers.

If you think there is anything about deception, you are mistaken.

Now get yourself a beer and have great day.

I have no idea what your are saying here. Batch codes are used for recalls, not date codes. Date codes on beer are used to inform consumer choice.

Edit: speaking of consumer choice, what’s the name of your brewery?

[majorvices]

@RC. Thank you for kind words. I appreciate that.

Now if you log in to the form from browser you will see where I clean, make beer, package it and sell it all by myself. Well I am lying to you. I got a sales person 6 years ago. But I can assure you that I have a knowledge how to sell beer in my area.

Now dispute your opinion there is much more people who are buying beer by brand and not by the date code.

Date code is for tracking purpose only for product recall obligations. It has nothing to do with consumers.

If you think there is anything about deception, you are mistaken.

Now get yourself a beer and have great day.

I have no idea what your are saying here. Batch codes are used for recalls, not date codes. Date codes on beer are used to inform consumer choice.

Edit: speaking of consumer choice, what’s the name of your brewery?

Date codes and batch codes can both be used for recalls - the date code can be the batch code

[Wilbur]

Tell you the truth we really do not want our competitors and beer distributors to understand our date codes. It all has to do with shelf space in stores.

We use batch number.

If I understand what you're saying, this is not wanting competitors seeing that your belgian blonde has been sitting on the shelf for 6 months but your porter is only 1 week old? Is the concern competitors are going to copy your beer, the way everyone started making grapefruit IPA after sculpin hit it big?

[Thirsty_Monk]

Tell you the truth we really do not want our competitors and beer distributors to understand our date codes. It all has to do with shelf space in stores.

We use batch number.

If I understand what you're saying, this is not wanting competitors seeing that your belgian blonde has been sitting on the shelf for 6 months but your porter is only 1 week old? Is the concern competitors are going to copy your beer, the way everyone started making grapefruit IPA after sculpin hit it big?

Yes concern is that beer distributor guy does not declare that your beer is not selling and it should be replaced with blue moon or another item they are insetivized to push.

Not all breweries are providing identification code on their package beers.

Now if we are talking about beer freshness, it is more complicated then “born of date”. The date code will tell you when product was packaged but does not tell you anything how beer was handled between packaging and purchase.

There is this rule 3-30-300 to 90-70-32. What that mean is that beer will age the same amount in 3 days stored at 90F as 30 days stored at 70F and 300 days stored at 32F. (Look up Charlie Bendford talk about it)

What this means is that your 30 day Oscar blues/ Sierra Nevada …(pick any lager brewery name) distributed by distributor could be less fresh then 60 days self distributed brewery.

Those distributor distributed breweries are doing wonderful job minimizing TPO (total present oxygen -I think) but have no control over trucking in hot trailers,  warehousing in non refrigerated warehouses and having a non refrigerated placement by the cash register or end cap.

In other words you can compare SN beer vs another SN beer because it is distributed by the same logistics but you can not compare OB vs SN because they have different logistics.

Bottom line is date code on the package does not tell you how fresh beer is. If you believe in that “born of date” marketing campaign worked on you. 

[Slowbrew]

Tell you the truth we really do not want our competitors and beer distributors to understand our date codes. It all has to do with shelf space in stores.

We use batch number.

If I understand what you're saying, this is not wanting competitors seeing that your belgian blonde has been sitting on the shelf for 6 months but your porter is only 1 week old? Is the concern competitors are going to copy your beer, the way everyone started making grapefruit IPA after sculpin hit it big?

Yes concern is that beer distributor guy does not declare that your beer is not selling and it should be replaced with blue moon or another item they are insetivized to push.

Not all breweries are providing identification code on their package beers.

Now if we are talking about beer freshness, it is more complicated then “born of date”. The date code will tell you when product was packaged but does not tell you anything how beer was handled between packaging and purchase.

There is this rule 3-30-300 to 90-70-32. What that mean is that beer will age the same amount in 3 days stored at 90F as 30 days stored at 70F and 300 days stored at 32F. (Look up Charlie Bendford talk about it)

What this means is that your 30 day Oscar blues/ Sierra Nevada …(pick any lager brewery name) distributed by distributor could be less fresh then 60 days self distributed brewery.

Those distributor distributed breweries are doing wonderful job minimizing TPO (total present oxygen -I think) but have no control over trucking in hot trailers,  warehousing in non refrigerated warehouses and having a non refrigerated placement by the cash register or end cap.

In other words you can compare SN beer vs another SN beer because it is distributed by the same logistics but you can not compare OB vs SN because they have different logistics.

Bottom line is date code on the package does not tell you how fresh beer is. If you believe in that “born of date” marketing campaign worked on you.

Don't forget that distributors are like loan sharks in most areas.  They do what ever it takes to make the competition look bad.  If that means restacking a 50 pack display every week so the oldest beer is always in back until it is to their advantage to have your, now old, beer in front they will happily do so.  I know guys who work for distributors and this scenario is the least sh$ty thing they have had to do to try and kill a craft brewer.

Paul