It’s Tuesday night and I just wrapped up some quick errands. I noticed my beer fridge was looking a little too empty before I left home so I swing by one of the packies (or liquor store for those of you outside of New England) on my route back.

What used to be a quick walk down the aisle and along the wall of coolers, has more often become a game of Minesweeper as I try to find fresh beer. I find myself pacing back and forth feverishly flipping cans over and juggling them in my hands looking for that elusive date code.

Much of the time, that date code (or lack of one) is how I’m deciding which cans or bottles to take home. For IPAs and other hoppy beers, I’m looking for something less than six weeks old. Other styles like lagers, stouts, and porters will last longer, but it’s still nice to know how long a beer’s been sitting on the shelf before handing over my hard-earned cash.

But who’s at fault for old beer on the shelves? And what can you do to avoid it?

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Breweries

Brewers are packaging their beers fresh and hope for you to enjoy them as fresh as possible. Once the beer leaves their conditioning tanks, the clock’s ticking.

Currently, some breweries will mark somewhere on the can or bottle the date it was packaged. Despite a variety of names – “born on,” “packaged,” “canned,” or “bottled” dates – these all tell you when the beer was packaged.

On the other hand, some breweries choose to list a “best buy” date. This is the date they’ve determined their beer will no longer be optimally fresh.

I prefer some version of the “canned on” over the more vague “best by” date and lets me make my own calculation to decide how “fresh” the beer is.

Another wrinkle in these date stamps is some breweries simply stamp a date and call it a day. It’s unclear if these dates represent a packaging date or a “best by” date. So, as you stand in the middle of the aisle on Jan. 20, 2021, and read 01/17/2021 on the bottom of a can, it’s fair to wonder if that DIPA is super fresh or well past its prime. There are, of course, other types of codes used to denote freshness, but we’ll leave those be for now.

Distributors and retailers

Of course, the other 2/3 of the three-tier system plays an important role. Distributors and retailers share a responsibility to make sure only the best product is available to consumers once the beer leaves the brewery. Both have a lot to gain if old cans are pulled to make room for fresh hops. After all, happy customers mean more money for everybody. But more importantly, reputations are at stake. All three have something to lose, but the brewery will generally bear the brunt of it. Not many people will think of who was responsible for rotating stock and just assume the brewery put out a sub-par product.

This is the greatest cause of my frustration. I can shrug off a brewery’s choice to not date their product. It’s a tad annoying, but I get it. But for a business to knowingly attempt to sell me an eight-month-old IPA for nearly $25 is unacceptable!

Some shoppers won’t know or care to check a beer’s freshness before buying. But others will – and that number is growing. While many may express their frustration without naming names publicly (as we’ll see below), word of mouth can be a business’ best friend or worst enemy. I personally know when I get burned, I tell my friends where I made my purchase.

What can you, the consumer, do about this?

• Look at what’s on the shelves. Are you seeing Octoberfest in March? Is that a spring release in early November? If the store’s not rotating seasonal product, that should be the only red flag you need to get out of there.
• Check for dates. As I’ve mentioned above, there are several kinds of date labels that can be found so check them out before heading to the checkout.
• Know your locals. If a local brewery you follow doesn’t date their beers, you can check out their social media for posts about recent releases.
• Buy directly from the brewery. The best way to guarantee fresh beer is to buy it directly from the source. There should be no question about your beer’s freshness if it’s bought in the taproom.

If you do find an out-of-date beer, say something…politely. If it’s an old beer sitting on a shelf, let a store employee know and maybe shoot the brewery a message. If you’d really like a brewery to date their beers, reach out to them and let them know.

It’s best not to drag any of them through the mud on social media – at least at first. In most cases, I’d like to think anybody would like to know that things could be improved. And in most instances where I’ve reached out, the folks on the other side have been appreciative and receptive.