From the brewer: Higher gravity special stuff usually something like "Spring 2009" or something. Printed around the neck or shoulder of the bottle. There is a 9 digit number on the lower-right part of the label, or the bottom of the can: the format is YYMMDDXXX, where the packaging date is MM/DD/YY. Bootlegger's (CA):Uses abottlingdate on the case box only. Best before date - The "best before" date does not guarantee product safety, but it does give you information about the freshness and potential shelf-life of the unopened food you are buying. The label reads BEST BEFORE: J F M A M J J A S O N D 12 13 14 so there would be 1 notch under a month and another under a year. So if you've got a code that reads 100980726 that means that the beer was brewed in 2010, the batch number is 098 and the day of bottling is 7/26. So if a label has three notches in the bottom left hand corner then it is the third bottling in Sept. for that style of beer. Surly:Uses acanned ondate. It's stamped on the case. It's burned into the label on the bottom left hand side. It's stamped on the outside of their cases as well as the bottles. Enter the date code into the corresponding box, making sure to follow the specified format and the date of manufacture will be displayed. They print a Julian date code for production on the shoulder of each bottle. First linehas 3 digits followed by a space, then one more digit. Palo Alto:Uses abottlingdate on all their bottles. Logsdon Farmhouse Ales:Uses abest beforedate on bottles,bottlingdate on cases. From the brewer:It is below the neck and above the body label. Format is MM/DD/YY. 09 is the year, 187 is the 187th day of the year and 9930 is a batch code. Beers that are too old are to be removed from the shelves and destroyed. They only do small batches of barrel-aged brews in bottles. The date is the month only. It's either on the bottle or on the top of the label. Format is MM/DD/YY.Dogfish Head:Shows thebottlingon the neck of the bottle. The number of imported beers has also risen. Legend (VA):Uses abottlingdate. There are plenty of other threads for good-natured banter between us German bier fans . "We believe in competing on the basis of the taste of our beer, not its age," says Fritz Maytag, owner of Anchor Brewing in San Francisco. date. Not bad. It's on the cases only. Format is MM/DD/YY. It's a Julian date code. Thomas Hooker:Uses aborn ondate. //-->,