Beer 101: Lesson #9 - We Shall Drink No Beer After Its Time: Best Before Dates Decoded
Jason Foster
Check out more of Jason Foster’s beer news and views at onbeer.org
So, class, we have had a few months to hang out together and learn some important beer basics -malt, hops, yeast, importance of region. This month I think you are ready to jump into the deep end, into the world of beer shelf life. Be warned, it is not an easy world. Sure, the basics are pretty straightforward, but just wait until you try to figure out the age of that beer you want to purchase.
Let’s start with the easy stuff. As I mentioned last month a standard strength beer that has been handled properly and is in an appropriate brown bottle(read the column on skunking - see, it pays to follow along), will easily last 4-6 months. After that time? Well, beer is not like milk. You can still drink it (again as I mentioned last month - check those back issues!). It is that the flavours deteriorate. The hop quality will shrink. Subtle flavours will disappear. The beer will seem to lose its edge. And undesirable flavours will increase. It will begin to display oxidation flavours like cardboard, wet paper and, if you are lucky, sherry (sherry is intentionally oxidized to produce that quality). It also flattens the overall impression of the beer. Any faults in the beer will also become more pronounced.
I understand that you want to avoid spending your hard-earned dollars on a beer past its prime. The good news is that most breweries put a code on their bottles or cases that tell you either when it was brewed or when it is past its best-before date. The bad news? There is no standardized system for the codes, meaning no two breweries are alike. Local and widely distributed brewers try to educate retailers about their code so the store can pull it from the shelves. Imports, brought in by a third party, will likely have no such education.
Either way this can be horribly frustrating for consumers. However, if you channel a little bit of Sherlock Holmes, you can figure out what the code might mean. The first hurdle is that some breweries print a “brewed on” or “bottled on” date, while others print a “best before” date. Sometimes the code is written as a straightforward date but more often it uses some esoteric system the consumer needs to decipher. Some of the codes can resemble hieroglyphics. For example, a Guinness code might read: 16B0. Negra Modelo can be even more incomprehensible: 2121C0.
How to make sense of it all? Well, let’s start with some specific examples to guide your way. Local Edmonton brewer Alley Kat is quite straightforward. Their boxes have a clearly marked best before date in the format year/month/day. The bottles also have a code, marked BB and then day/month/year. Easy! (I must add here that microbreweries tend to be significantly more transparent with this information than bigger breweries. I am just saying…)
Big Rock gets more creative. They have a five digit best before code. The last two digits are the year, while the first three digits are the day of the year, numerically speaking. A code of 15210 means it is best before the 152nd day of 2010 - June 1. A bit more challenging, but still fairly clear, all said.
It is with the big boys where things get more complicated. Many use a letter code for the month (A=January, B=February, etc.), followed one or two digits for the year. For example, that Guinness code reads February 16, 2010. Now, just to keep you confused, they use a Bottled On date, not expiry date. Sigh.
Negra Modelo is also a bottling date, and, as a way to throw you, the first four digits are meaningless (for you - they are a production number). All that matters is the C0 - March 2010. Molson, possibly the king of confusion on this issue, has a 13-digit code, most of which is not the date. The opening letter is the month, the first two digits the day and the last the year. The stuff in between - irrelevant!
The range of code options is dizzying. But this short lesson gives you a few clues. First, if it looks like a date, in whatever version, it likely is. Second, if it has one letter in it, that letter is the month, and the year will be directly connected to it, often the day as well. Third, there is no way to tell whether it is a best before or bottled on date; you are on you r own on that front. Fourth, if it has 13 digits, well, good luck to you.
One final piece of advice to help you avoid stale beer. When in doubt ask the store staff. They may know and can help you out. If they don’t know, they should (and you should be shopping somewhere else). In the end the best piece of advice might be to purchase from stores that you know sell a lot of beer (like Sherbrooke). The best security for procuring fresh beer is knowing that the stock moves at a brisk pace.