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> To adhere with the requisite language outlined, any food products with a date label — with the exception of infant formula, eggs, beer, and malt beverages — m

> To adhere with the requisite language outlined, any food products with a date label — with the exception of infant formula, eggs, beer, and malt beverages — must state “Best if Used By” to indicate peak quality, and “Use By” to designate food safety. Infant formula is required federally, so OK. Eggs are an oddly specific one, but I guess I can see it (although I'd wonder why some other products like milk, or meat might not be similarly required). But why beer??? Legit question--I don't drink so maybe it's obvious and I'm just a knucklehead.

mikro2nd 2y ago
Beer certainly is an odd one! Some (craft) craft beers will age gracefully -- improving, even -- for years. Industrial lagers... not so much. I scored once with an imported (Belgian) craft beer at the local supermarket, heavily marked down price because the sell-by date was approaching. Some days later, marked down by half again because the date had passed. Needless to say, I bought all I could carry.
- crowcroft 2y ago
  This is a tricky one, because at some point you need to think about the integrity of the product's packaging, and how well it's been stored. Craft beer *in a can* will not age gracefully. Even in a bottle, while it will probably be fine, how much light exposure are the bottle getting, have they been left out in the sun at any point etc. Best before dates, hard expiry dates (if required), and ideally including a packaged on date would be a pretty ideal amount of information.
  - psunavy03 2y ago
    It depends on the beer type as well. Malty strong beers age well. Hoppy beers don't because the compounds are volatile. Malty beers benefit in flavor from continued breakdown of their chemical compounds, hoppy beers don't.
    - _JamesA_ 2y ago
      I never thought of it that way but IPA's always taste off to me.
      - sundarurfriend 2y ago
        > Malty strong beers age well. Hoppy beers don't because the compounds are volatile. > IPA's always taste off to me. That sounds contradictory to what I've heard about IPAs: that they were created because the normal beers the British had at the time wouldn't survive the journey to India, so they added a lot more hops and called it India Pale Ale. Based on that, I'd expect them to age better, not worse, than other kinds, but I'm not a beer person and this is just secondhand knowledge that I've never bothered to verify.
        TrueSlacker0 2y ago
        The amount of hops in the beers from that story were about as bitter as a common blonde ale. The modern IPA is nothing like that anymore. Also its the aroma compounds of hops that breaks down so fast, not the bittering aspects.This is why you can store a Russian imperial stout (high hop bitterness, low hop aroma, very high abv) but not normally a double/triple IPA (high hop bitterness, high hop aroma, high abv) and defiantly not age a normal IPA or session IPA (high hop aroma, low abv). *Some overly malty double and triple IPAs will age into a nice barley wine if given enough time.
        ImPostingOnHN 2y ago
        The hops are somewhat antibacterial, so they can help against contamination, but the hop flavors break down over time, and light and oxidation are what "skunk" a beer.
    - hollandheese 2y ago
      Sours (non-kettle) age extremely well. A decade out they can taste even better than when fresh. You'll possibly have to recarbonate them though.
  - TrueSlacker0 2y ago
    "Craft beer in a can will not age gracefully. Even in a bottle, while it will probably be fine, how much light exposure are the bottle getting, have they been left out in the sun at any point etc." A modern beer can, on a newer canning line, is superior to a bottle in every single way. This debate about bottles being better than cans is from years ago. Cans and especially the canning machines have come a very long way in the last 15 years. That is one of the many reasons why almost every brewery is slowly switching to cans. In regard to aging beers, there are a many important factors. The biggest enemy in aging a beer is oxygen. Oxygen gives beer a cardboard, paper flavor or a very raisin-y flavor, eventually it makes the entire beer taste like soy sauce. As you mentioned zero light in a can so no skunking, although brown bottles stored in a dark cool place don't experience much of this. But clear, green and other bottles do. Bottle caps slowly leak oxygen in over a very long time and is why you might see a oxygen absorbing material in the under side of some bottle caps. On the flip side one majorly common way a can will go bad in aging is from a seal alignment issue. This is especially common in smaller breweries as automated seam inspectors are quite expensive. The seal will visually look great. But if you tear it apart and measure the folds its quite common for them to be a little bit off, which can slowly leak out carbonation and in oxygen. I'm a huge fan of packaged on dates for beer.
- idunnoman1222 2y ago
  Come on it has nothing to do with the industrial scale at which the beer is created it has to do with which ingredients malt, hops, etc.
bilekas 2y ago
I'm actually super curious about that too, as far as I know pathogens cant live in beer, so I don't know how it can go bad. I wonder though if local brewery's or more artigianale brewing processes are different and maybe could be a bit riskier ?
- vel0city 2y ago
  > pathogens cant live in beer Depending on the beer there might be live yeasts in it. Beers can still go bad. Not always from a "not safe to consume" but often at least a "not going to taste very good anymore" kind of thing. Beers will end up oxidizing, the stuff in the beer will degrade over time, etc. Not all beers age well, some need to be had within a certain period of freshness. Generally I prefer a "born-on" date for beer.
  - bilekas 2y ago
    A born date is a nice idea actually, they do it for wines so it would transfer easily. When you say beeds end up oxidizing, could this kind of activity cause maybe a reaction to say an aluminium can for example ?
    - vel0city 2y ago
      Most aluminum cans have a plastic lining inside of the can. Assuming the lining was undamaged and applied properly, it should prevent the beer from reacting with the can for a long while. Usually, the oxidization is with the oxygen which was already dissolved in the beer during brewing (important to have some for fermentation) but depending on ingredients oxidization can happen without the presence of molecular oxygen.
- theptip 2y ago
  Plenty of undesirable stuff can live in beer. Brettanomyces will make your beer taste phenolic. Lactic Acid Bacteria will sour it (Lactobacillus and Pediococcus are two common contaminants). Oxygenation will gradually make the beer taste like cardboard. Hop aromatics degrade rapidly, heavily hopped beers are best within a month of brewing. Very few beers get better over time (generally sours and stouts), most are beginning to degrade immediately and fall off a cliff within a year.
manwe150 2y ago
The text of the law seems to be specific that the beer exemption (and other alcohol) is about a permission to put the vintage (year month, etc), since alcohol are expected to change over time even after bottling (some better some worse) so consumers would desire that information even though it does not conform to the normal "use by" or "best by" relevant to other products (any other placement or use of a date on a label being what is made illegal by the law)
psunavy03 2y ago
Beer is pasteurized or else full of live yeast cultures. It doesn't go "bad" per se in the sense that it will hurt you, but some beers taste bad beyond a certain point. Hoppy beers lose flavor in ~90 days or so after bottling. Mass-market beers "skunk" if they are exposed to light and the UV causes certain compounds to break down. Strong unpasteurized malty beers like porters and stouts can age for literally years in a cool dark place, and it smooths the flavors out.
- MisterTea 2y ago
  > Strong unpasteurized malty beers like porters and stouts can age for literally years in a cool dark place, and it smooths the flavors out. Had a coworker who made this phenomenon into a yearly gathering. We would bring beers of our choice, bury them in his back yard, then drink and grill/smoke meats. Next year he would dig up the previous years burial and we would try to bring the same beers with us. Then we all gather around and have a tasting comparing the year long aged beer to the fresh beer. You also brought along new beers to bury. He names it Man Beer Meat because it was just guys drinking and grilling.
  - strictnein 2y ago
    That sounds like a wonderful time. And amusingly, if he moves, the new owner may do some digging in their backyard and find a bunch of perfectly fine bottles of beer.
fmbb 2y ago
American eggs are incredibly sensitive due to the chlorine washing they go through before making it to the store. Not oddly specific. Here in Sweden (and I assume the rest of the EU) when I buy eggs they are not refrigerated and I keep them in the pantry at room temp for weeks or months without issues. The price I pay is that they sometimes come with a little bird poop on them from the store.
- moate 2y ago
  (Most of) Europe doesn't wash their eggs, allowing them to be stored at room temperature, but as you said, the standard for physical contamination is lower. The US washes our eggs, requiring refrigeration but greatly extending shelf life and greatly reducing physical contamination. Advantages to both (Europe wins hands down if you need to whip egg whites to stiff peaks) but very interesting how the two regions addressed the safety issues around this.
  - rahimnathwani 2y ago
    How does washing eggs extend shelf life? Let's say I have unwashed eggs and washed eggs, and I put both in the refrigerator. Won't the unwashed ones last longer, because they haven't had the natural protective coating removed?
    - Tyr42 2y ago
      There is also condensation to consider and I think that putting the unwashed eggs in the fridge can be unsafe if the condensation can allow stuff from the poop to move around. But I'm no eggspert.
      - moate 2y ago
        Your eggplaination was eggactly correct.
    - relaxing 2y ago
      The washed ones last because you washed off all the hen house bacteria, and then kept it refrigerated so new bacteria wouldn’t grow. Chickens, especially commercial poultry farms, are disgusting.
jjice 2y ago
> But why beer??? Legit question--I don't drink so maybe it's obvious and I'm just a knucklehead. Very fair question. Anecdotally, when I was just graduating university I drank a few 4+ year past expiration macro-brewed beers that were sitting in the fridge that entire time. The results were not good compared to similar consumption of non-expired beer.
tivert 2y ago
> But why beer??? Legit question--I don't drink so maybe it's obvious and I'm just a knucklehead. Maybe a different regulatory regime applies? That's the case at the federal level. For instance: alcohol often doesn't have the typical food labels because it's regulated by the ATF [1] not the FDA, and food labels are an FDA thing: https://www.ttb.gov/regulated-commodities/beverage-alcohol/wine/labeling-wine/alcohol-beverage-labeling https://www.ttb.gov/regulated-commodities/beverage-alcohol/w...: > TTB regulations do not require nutrient content labeling for alcohol beverages. https://www.fda.gov/food/nutrition-food-labeling-and-critical-foods https://www.fda.gov/food/nutrition-food-labeling-and-critica...: > Food labeling is required for most prepared foods, such as breads, cereals, canned and frozen foods, snacks, desserts, drinks, etc. Nutrition labeling for raw produce (fruits and vegetables) and fish is voluntary. [1] apparently now split into the ATF and TTB
- TrueSlacker0 2y ago
  Looking at TTB's mandatory items on labeling [1] there is nothing about any dates. Some states have different requirements, and I don't know California's, but many states do not require any kind of date coding. [1] https://www.ttb.gov/regulated-commodities/beverage-alcohol/beer/labeling#Mandatory https://www.ttb.gov/regulated-commodities/beverage-alcohol/b...
anon84873628 2y ago
I just assumed it was due to better lobbying by the egg and beer industries ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

mikro2nd 2y ago

Beer certainly is an odd one! Some (craft) craft beers will age gracefully -- improving, even -- for years. Industrial lagers... not so much. I scored once with an imported (Belgian) craft beer at the local supermarket, heavily marked down price because the sell-by date was approaching. Some days later, marked down by half again because the date had passed. Needless to say, I bought all I could carry.

crowcroft 2y ago
This is a tricky one, because at some point you need to think about the integrity of the product's packaging, and how well it's been stored. Craft beer *in a can* will not age gracefully. Even in a bottle, while it will probably be fine, how much light exposure are the bottle getting, have they been left out in the sun at any point etc. Best before dates, hard expiry dates (if required), and ideally including a packaged on date would be a pretty ideal amount of information.
- psunavy03 2y ago
  It depends on the beer type as well. Malty strong beers age well. Hoppy beers don't because the compounds are volatile. Malty beers benefit in flavor from continued breakdown of their chemical compounds, hoppy beers don't.
  - _JamesA_ 2y ago
    I never thought of it that way but IPA's always taste off to me.
    - sundarurfriend 2y ago
      > Malty strong beers age well. Hoppy beers don't because the compounds are volatile. > IPA's always taste off to me. That sounds contradictory to what I've heard about IPAs: that they were created because the normal beers the British had at the time wouldn't survive the journey to India, so they added a lot more hops and called it India Pale Ale. Based on that, I'd expect them to age better, not worse, than other kinds, but I'm not a beer person and this is just secondhand knowledge that I've never bothered to verify.
      - TrueSlacker0 2y ago
        The amount of hops in the beers from that story were about as bitter as a common blonde ale. The modern IPA is nothing like that anymore. Also its the aroma compounds of hops that breaks down so fast, not the bittering aspects.This is why you can store a Russian imperial stout (high hop bitterness, low hop aroma, very high abv) but not normally a double/triple IPA (high hop bitterness, high hop aroma, high abv) and defiantly not age a normal IPA or session IPA (high hop aroma, low abv). *Some overly malty double and triple IPAs will age into a nice barley wine if given enough time.
      - ImPostingOnHN 2y ago
        The hops are somewhat antibacterial, so they can help against contamination, but the hop flavors break down over time, and light and oxidation are what "skunk" a beer.
  - hollandheese 2y ago
    Sours (non-kettle) age extremely well. A decade out they can taste even better than when fresh. You'll possibly have to recarbonate them though.
- TrueSlacker0 2y ago
  "Craft beer in a can will not age gracefully. Even in a bottle, while it will probably be fine, how much light exposure are the bottle getting, have they been left out in the sun at any point etc." A modern beer can, on a newer canning line, is superior to a bottle in every single way. This debate about bottles being better than cans is from years ago. Cans and especially the canning machines have come a very long way in the last 15 years. That is one of the many reasons why almost every brewery is slowly switching to cans. In regard to aging beers, there are a many important factors. The biggest enemy in aging a beer is oxygen. Oxygen gives beer a cardboard, paper flavor or a very raisin-y flavor, eventually it makes the entire beer taste like soy sauce. As you mentioned zero light in a can so no skunking, although brown bottles stored in a dark cool place don't experience much of this. But clear, green and other bottles do. Bottle caps slowly leak oxygen in over a very long time and is why you might see a oxygen absorbing material in the under side of some bottle caps. On the flip side one majorly common way a can will go bad in aging is from a seal alignment issue. This is especially common in smaller breweries as automated seam inspectors are quite expensive. The seal will visually look great. But if you tear it apart and measure the folds its quite common for them to be a little bit off, which can slowly leak out carbonation and in oxygen. I'm a huge fan of packaged on dates for beer.
idunnoman1222 2y ago
Come on it has nothing to do with the industrial scale at which the beer is created it has to do with which ingredients malt, hops, etc.

bilekas 2y ago

I'm actually super curious about that too, as far as I know pathogens cant live in beer, so I don't know how it can go bad. I wonder though if local brewery's or more artigianale brewing processes are different and maybe could be a bit riskier ?

vel0city 2y ago
> pathogens cant live in beer Depending on the beer there might be live yeasts in it. Beers can still go bad. Not always from a "not safe to consume" but often at least a "not going to taste very good anymore" kind of thing. Beers will end up oxidizing, the stuff in the beer will degrade over time, etc. Not all beers age well, some need to be had within a certain period of freshness. Generally I prefer a "born-on" date for beer.
- bilekas 2y ago
  A born date is a nice idea actually, they do it for wines so it would transfer easily. When you say beeds end up oxidizing, could this kind of activity cause maybe a reaction to say an aluminium can for example ?
  - vel0city 2y ago
    Most aluminum cans have a plastic lining inside of the can. Assuming the lining was undamaged and applied properly, it should prevent the beer from reacting with the can for a long while. Usually, the oxidization is with the oxygen which was already dissolved in the beer during brewing (important to have some for fermentation) but depending on ingredients oxidization can happen without the presence of molecular oxygen.
theptip 2y ago
Plenty of undesirable stuff can live in beer. Brettanomyces will make your beer taste phenolic. Lactic Acid Bacteria will sour it (Lactobacillus and Pediococcus are two common contaminants). Oxygenation will gradually make the beer taste like cardboard. Hop aromatics degrade rapidly, heavily hopped beers are best within a month of brewing. Very few beers get better over time (generally sours and stouts), most are beginning to degrade immediately and fall off a cliff within a year.

manwe150 2y ago

The text of the law seems to be specific that the beer exemption (and other alcohol) is about a permission to put the vintage (year month, etc), since alcohol are expected to change over time even after bottling (some better some worse) so consumers would desire that information even though it does not conform to the normal "use by" or "best by" relevant to other products (any other placement or use of a date on a label being what is made illegal by the law)

psunavy03 2y ago

Beer is pasteurized or else full of live yeast cultures. It doesn't go "bad" per se in the sense that it will hurt you, but some beers taste bad beyond a certain point. Hoppy beers lose flavor in ~90 days or so after bottling. Mass-market beers "skunk" if they are exposed to light and the UV causes certain compounds to break down. Strong unpasteurized malty beers like porters and stouts can age for literally years in a cool dark place, and it smooths the flavors out.

MisterTea 2y ago
> Strong unpasteurized malty beers like porters and stouts can age for literally years in a cool dark place, and it smooths the flavors out. Had a coworker who made this phenomenon into a yearly gathering. We would bring beers of our choice, bury them in his back yard, then drink and grill/smoke meats. Next year he would dig up the previous years burial and we would try to bring the same beers with us. Then we all gather around and have a tasting comparing the year long aged beer to the fresh beer. You also brought along new beers to bury. He names it Man Beer Meat because it was just guys drinking and grilling.
- strictnein 2y ago
  That sounds like a wonderful time. And amusingly, if he moves, the new owner may do some digging in their backyard and find a bunch of perfectly fine bottles of beer.

fmbb 2y ago

American eggs are incredibly sensitive due to the chlorine washing they go through before making it to the store. Not oddly specific. Here in Sweden (and I assume the rest of the EU) when I buy eggs they are not refrigerated and I keep them in the pantry at room temp for weeks or months without issues. The price I pay is that they sometimes come with a little bird poop on them from the store.

moate 2y ago
(Most of) Europe doesn't wash their eggs, allowing them to be stored at room temperature, but as you said, the standard for physical contamination is lower. The US washes our eggs, requiring refrigeration but greatly extending shelf life and greatly reducing physical contamination. Advantages to both (Europe wins hands down if you need to whip egg whites to stiff peaks) but very interesting how the two regions addressed the safety issues around this.
- rahimnathwani 2y ago
  How does washing eggs extend shelf life? Let's say I have unwashed eggs and washed eggs, and I put both in the refrigerator. Won't the unwashed ones last longer, because they haven't had the natural protective coating removed?
  - Tyr42 2y ago
    There is also condensation to consider and I think that putting the unwashed eggs in the fridge can be unsafe if the condensation can allow stuff from the poop to move around. But I'm no eggspert.
    - moate 2y ago
      Your eggplaination was eggactly correct.
  - relaxing 2y ago
    The washed ones last because you washed off all the hen house bacteria, and then kept it refrigerated so new bacteria wouldn’t grow. Chickens, especially commercial poultry farms, are disgusting.

jjice 2y ago

> But why beer??? Legit question--I don't drink so maybe it's obvious and I'm just a knucklehead. Very fair question. Anecdotally, when I was just graduating university I drank a few 4+ year past expiration macro-brewed beers that were sitting in the fridge that entire time. The results were not good compared to similar consumption of non-expired beer.

tivert 2y ago

> But why beer??? Legit question--I don't drink so maybe it's obvious and I'm just a knucklehead. Maybe a different regulatory regime applies? That's the case at the federal level. For instance: alcohol often doesn't have the typical food labels because it's regulated by the ATF [1] not the FDA, and food labels are an FDA thing: https://www.ttb.gov/regulated-commodities/beverage-alcohol/wine/labeling-wine/alcohol-beverage-labeling https://www.ttb.gov/regulated-commodities/beverage-alcohol/w...: > TTB regulations do not require nutrient content labeling for alcohol beverages. https://www.fda.gov/food/nutrition-food-labeling-and-critical-foods https://www.fda.gov/food/nutrition-food-labeling-and-critica...: > Food labeling is required for most prepared foods, such as breads, cereals, canned and frozen foods, snacks, desserts, drinks, etc. Nutrition labeling for raw produce (fruits and vegetables) and fish is voluntary. [1] apparently now split into the ATF and TTB

TrueSlacker0 2y ago
Looking at TTB's mandatory items on labeling [1] there is nothing about any dates. Some states have different requirements, and I don't know California's, but many states do not require any kind of date coding. [1] https://www.ttb.gov/regulated-commodities/beverage-alcohol/beer/labeling#Mandatory https://www.ttb.gov/regulated-commodities/beverage-alcohol/b...

anon84873628 2y ago

I just assumed it was due to better lobbying by the egg and beer industries ¯\_(ツ)_/¯