Aus craft beer lack of bottling/BB dates

[Mountain High]

[SIZE=10.5pt]Just wondering if my fellow craft enthusiasts are as frustrated as me with the lack of bottling dates on Aus craft beers? Had a few dud hoppy beers that I know were way past their date. One of the beers in question was a hopped out red from Kaiju! a few months back. I emailed them to ask them if they had bottling dates as i thought maybe I wasn’t looking in the right place and they replied saying ' we don't have the capacity to date stamp our beers yet'. (Can someone explain what is meant by that quote.. i don't get it?[/SIZE]

 

[Mr. No-Tip]

Commercial brewers have to buy labels 1000's at a time. To make it affordable, tens of thousands. Obviously these labels will be split across batches, so you can't print a BB date at the printers place.

Smaller (or perhaps more accurately non biggest) bottling lines don't have date stamping facility on them. This presents a problem for small to medium craft brewers.

I've seen very small brewers hand stamp their labels, but that requires certain label stock and a fuckload of effort. There's a real challenging space for the mid range brewer who is too big to hand stamp every bottle, but can't afford a bling cash bottling line that the big boys have.

 

[Mardoo]

It seems like there's a gap in the market for portable bottling plants like they use here in the wine industry and in the States for both wine and beer. Truck pulls up, attach feeds from your tanks and insert labels and caps, date-stamped beer comes out the other side. Being as a lot of breweries here will be smaller simply due to the size of the market, I feel like these portable plants could have a positive effect on stabilising the market by making sanitary, simple bottling available to more breweries.

 

[tugger]

99 percent of the time they don't stamp the labels.
They just print the best before on the bottle in hard to see ink.
Afik you can't sell a product without a best before date.
If your product has a bb date greater than 2 years it's not needed.

 

[SnakeDoctor]

This is one of the key reasons I home brew, unless you are buying the hoppy beer at the cellar door it's not going to be anywhere near fresh and most likely treated quite poorly.

 

[wynnum1]

Was told about a company that made processed meat that put the use by dates on when left the warehouse.

 

[winkle]

Some smaller brewers also attach the BB Date on the carton (not much help if you are buying singles though).

 

[stakka82]

Yeah this is a real pain in the ass, and it's kind of counter productive because I won't buy a beer I don't know the BB date of, even though I love to support local wherever I can.

I find Aussie craft hop driven beers are absolute rubbish if over 3 months old (under 5%) or over 6 months old (5% plus).

Imports seem to do better, not sure if this is because they have better packaging processes/equipment.

Another thing that gives me the shits is when you buy a 'grey' import and the BB has obviously been scratched off. I took a punt on a 4 pack of 'ipa is dead' by brewdog the other day with a scratched off BB and I will never do it again. I have no idea what that 4 pack had gone through but the beer was absolutely foul (not just lack of hops but actual dirty taste) and the plastic seal on the inside of the bottle cap was all warped. Really spewing cause I love brewdog and had heard a lot of good things about the series.

 

[skb]

I have to agree I avoid craft beer with out bottling date have been burnt too many times, or I buy beer that I know has really long legs. It is a real shame the lack of information I think means people buy less, but even worse new people to craft beer buy a bottle at a premium price and go "crap this is awful" so it does the industry a disservice.

I know not considered a craft brewer in reality anymore, but that was the great thing that Sam Adams did in the USA when they re-started with the boston lager .. they dated all their beers and would not let them be sold beyond a certain date, and took the risk of buying back if they were not sold .. at that stage a very brave and commercially risky move in the early 80s. That ensured a massive take up in their beer and got people to appreciate flavor. I am not sure if the others at the time like Siera Nevada did it but it would not surprise me but new brand and demand out stripped production in their case so maybe less of an issue.

 

[klangers]

I specify/design/commission bottling/packaging lines for a living and I can say that an inkjet dot matrix date coder isn't expensive. The things that cost a lot are the IT integration if they want full enterprise-level feedback; code verification etc - and you don't need these things if you're not worried about setting the code manually.

There's no excuse really to not put a bottling date code on, or at least a batch code. That way they have traceability when they receive complaints.

It seems like there's a gap in the market for portable bottling plants like they use here in the wine industry and in the States for both wine and beer. Truck pulls up, attach feeds from your tanks and insert labels and caps, date-stamped beer comes out the other side. Being as a lot of breweries here will be smaller simply due to the size of the market, I feel like these portable plants could have a positive effect on stabilising the market by making sanitary, simple bottling available to more breweries.

That's a great idea actually - I might have a look at the feasibility of that!

 

[Mardoo]

Do it! I can't stand the thought of running bottling plants for a living so I keep putting it out there hoping someone who might want to do it will see it.