The independent consumer guide to beer product dating.
The independent consumer guide to beer product
dating.
Pennsylvania is home to several small-to-midsized breweries, most of which appear to have limited distribution outside the state. Few of the breweries listed below have a major distributor in my part of country, so analysis is based on limited access to containers.
I just realized, that was an awfully uptight paragraph.
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Entry updated 6 September 1998. Although it's actually owned by Labatt Breweries, Latrobe doesn't use the Labatt product dates.
Bottles and cans have an obvious packaging date, like PKG 09 SEP 98. Boxes and cartons, however, still use an older system. Look for a two-line code (on the long side) like this:
6124
1004
The first line is a bottling/canning date in YDDD format. (Until the beginning of 1997, bottles and cans also used the YDDD format date. For example, today is
Latrobe's manufacturer number is 71439. The Rolling Rock product line is Rolling Rock, Rolling Rock Ice, and Rolling Rock Light.
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This is very iffy, because I've only seen a few cans of Iron City beer in my life, but I think the first four digits of of those production codes are a Julian shipping date in DDDY format.
Pittsburgh Brewing Company's manufacturer number is 73832.
Straub uses blindingly obvious bottling dates in a MMDDYY format. Look for a stamp like this on the bottle's shoulder:
BOTTLED
071096F
Wainwright appears to be an imaginary subsidiary of The Pittsburgh Brewing Company, used to sell the Black Jack/One-Eyed Jack line of beers. As with Pittsburgh's main product lines, the first four digits of the production code are probably a julian bottling date, year-trailing.
BeerDates.com is the independent consumer guide to beer product dating. It is not owned, operated, affiliated with, or endorsed by any brewery or brewing company. In other words, if you want to send e-mail to a beer company, don't send it to me. "Rolling Rock" is a registered trademark of the Latrobe Brewing Company. "Straub" is a trademark of Straub Brewery, Inc.