Boulevard Beer – How To Read Our Bottle Date Codes

A little code on every neck of our bottles, conveying a ton of info!

As brewers, we take quality very seriously at Boulevard. We choose only the highest quality ingredients and have the sharpest people using the best equipment we can afford to make sure that every beer is something we can be proud of. This dedication to quality standards is certainly reflected in the manner in which we bottle each drop of beer. The next two blogs will delve into the details that we obsess over in the handling of packaged beer. Below explains the markings we place on our bottles, cases, and mother cartons of beer as they leave our bottling line.

Every single bottle of Boulevard beer receives a little code on the neck of the bottle that conveys a ton of information.

The first number in the row of code represents the last digit of the year in which the beer was bottled. In this case, the 3 indicates this beer was bottled in 2013. The next four digits are the military time that the bottle entered the 2nd floor of our bottling facility and the letter tells us from which bright tank the beer came. The second line of the print is a little more obvious. Okay, it’s very obvious. This bottle of beer is best consumed by November 16, 2013. This isn’t to say that the beer instantly becomes poison at midnight on the 17th, but rather, based on results from our tasting panel experts, this beer will be an excellent representation of Boulevard Pale Ale through the 16th of November. We keep a library of all of our packaged beers and exhaustively taste and test them as they age to determine when a beer’s quality begins to degrade to ensure that you always have the best example of our beer in your glass.

The next installment in this two-part series will discuss the steps we take to ensure our bottles are destined for a longer, more stable shelf life than non-bottle conditioned beers.
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