The date you see on most beer bottles are not expiration dates but ‘pull dates,’ which are the dates retailers are instructed to pull beers off a shelf if they haven’t sold yet.

The beer inside hasn’t expired, but it’s not longer considered “brewery fresh” and most companies no longer want it to be sold.

Most beer bottles have some sort of date on them, but figuring out what they mean can be a bit confusing.

Some bottles have “pull dates” and some have “born on dates.” What do each of these dates mean? Here’s a closer look at the dates on your bottle, and how they can affect your beer.

U-type permit labels are generally considered c1933-36.

Occasionally you run across a label with a U-type permit without the IRTP statement; an obvious error that the federal label examiner would be quick to jump on. Jody Farra & Phil Myers book The Post Prohibition Brewery Guide 1933-1983 lists the permit numbers that the Treasury Department has on file, but the file is incomplete.

In fact, similar to soda/mineral water bottles, many (most?

) beer bottles were the property of the beer bottler and were sometimes marked as such, i.e., THIS BOTTLE IS NEVER SOLD or similar words to that effect (Paul & Parmalee 1973; Busch 1987).

If A-B beer went 110 days without selling, A-B crews would sweep into bars and restaurants and hand the retailer a check for the value of the beer.

Of course this wasn’t info readily available to the consumer, which can make born on dates a bit confusing as they’re easy to mistake for pull dates.

While getting a beer as fresh as possible is great, aged beer can be pretty wonderful, so which beer should you pick up from the store?

Beer and ale, being carbonated (known as "pressure ware" in the bottle making industry), pretty much had to be contained in cylindrical heavy glass bottles since such a shape is inherently stronger than other shapes - all other things being equal, e.g., bottle size, glass thickness and quality (Tooley 1953; Glass Industry 1959).

(*See note about multiple sided bottles below.) Beer bottles were of thick glass also since they had to be able to survive extensive post-bottling handling and use since these bottles were typically re-used many times, as evidenced by extensive base and side wear to many examples.