Cracking the code for beer freshness
Freshness in beer has become a focal point for many breweries in the relatively recent past as IPA culture has advanced and matured. Hops
— the key aromatic ingredient in IPAs and other styles — taste and smell the best when they’re fresh, giving consumers every reason to throw their money only at beers that haven’t spent long periods of time in warehouses or storage spaces before hitting the shelf.
But how does one know when a beer was made and when it will go over the hill? Some breweries make it easy. For example, an empty bottle of Deschutes Brewery’s Black Butte Porter is sitting on my counter. The back of the bottle is facing me, and I see in clear print: “Packaged on: 0½3/20.” It’s a porter — a dark malty beer that a little aging time won’t hurt.
On the bottom of a can of JC Flyer IPA from Iron Springs, the message is a friendly “Songs of summer 06/10/20.” (The brewpub’s owner Mike Altman confirmed this is the date the beer was canned, and added that he and his brewing team are now aiming to brew new IPA batches every 30 days to minimize the odds of an old can lingering in the marketplace.)
But many breweries offer something more in line with secret coding. Some use the
Julian dating system, which features a number between
001 and 366. Sometimes, this number is sandwiched between other numbers, which may represent time of day or brewery batch number — unneeded info for most consumers’ interests. There is often no explanation of what day this time stamp is supposed to reflect — the day it was packaged, or the day after which it is considered subprime.
According to a 2016 post in Craft Beer & Brewing, “a large number of breweries don’t offer any date stamps whatsoever, leaving consumers in the dark about the freshness of their products.”
Fortunately, most breweries seem to be getting better about this. Printed on the bottom of a can of Fairfield brewery Heretic’s Make America Juicy Again New England-Style IPA is the simple message: “Canned on 05/06/20.” Four digits following are smeared and illegible, but I had the information I wanted when I bought this beer.
Murkier is the messaging on the bottom of a can of Sierra Nevada’s Hazy Little Thing IPA, which reads “0305206 14:52.” Is that March 5, 2020? Some slashes between month, day and year would help for deciphering. But what is the six for? And 14:52 p.m. is presumably the time the can was sealed, right? This kind of coding is not super helpful for those hoping to know that a beer is fresh.
A can of Golden State Cider’s Brut is printed with 120619 17:08. Assuming that they’ve used the Julian calendar system, I am guessing that the cider was canned at 5:08 p.m. on or around May 1 — roughly the 120th day of the year.
A can of Alphadelic IPA, from Hop Valley Brewing in Eugene, says, “SEP 22 2020 #207 15:48.” This one reflects a different type of data — the expiration date. At least, that’s what I assume the date is, seeing that it’s in the future. Is 207 a batch number? And was it canned at 3:48 p.m.?
A tall can of Budweiser had perhaps the most mystifying coding on the bottom: 1900T20 FX1357. Whatever is that supposed to mean? I could find out, I suppose, but why should I? Why should any consumer? Why don’t these producers just present information in a less cryptic format?
As we know, some do, especially Stone Brewing. The San Diego brewery’s “Enjoy By” series uses no murky messaging whatsoever. Indeed, the most important information is presented not merely as a courtesy to consumers but as a direct form of product adver
tising. As Stone explains on its website, “(T)he Enjoy By date isn’t randomly etched in tiny text somewhere on the bottle, to be overlooked by all but the most attentive. Instead, we’ve sent a clear message in the name of the beer itself.”
The freshness of a beer is not a food safety or health matter.
Old beer tastes stale — that’s all. This might explain why breweries aren’t required to clearly present dates of either production or expiration, as milk and cream producers are.
But since freshness can determine the quality of a beer, it’s worth glancing at a can or bottle before you make a purchase, and at least see if you can crack the code.