How do I know if my Flying Dog Beer is fresh?
Here’s the scoop. At Flying Dog we use a modified Julian calendar to date most of our beers. If you look in the lower right corner of the label you will find a code that reads something like 123FX08. Here is what this means:
The first three numbers are the day of the year that the beer will go “out of date”. So using the code above, we know that this beer is considered fresh until the 123rd day of ’08. And yes the last two digits indicate the year while the FX is a code we use internally at the brewery. So this beer went out of date on Friday May 2nd, 2008.
We give most of our beers 140 days from the bottling day to be considered fresh. The exceptions to this would be our Road Dog Porter which has a 200 day code and our Canis Major series (Double Dog Double Pale Ale, Gonzo Imperial Porter, Horn Dog Barley Wine, and Kerberos Belgian-Style Tripel) which are vintage dated meaning that if these beers are treated well, they can keep for up to several years. In this case the code will read something like “VINT08EE”. The only part of this code you will need to know is the year this beer was packaged, in this case 2008.
Our Wild Dog series does not have a code but again these beers can hold up well for up to several years.
Our sensory team at Flying Dog Brewery tastes all of our beers at regular intervals to see how well they hold up after being stored cold, at room temperature, and stored hot at over 100F. The difference between the beers kept cold and the ones from the hot room (we call it the penalty box) can be amazing. Of course the factor is not just temperature but the time the beer spends warm. So leaving a six pack in you trunk on a hot day will not ruin your beer in a day but if left in there for an extended period of time will certainly have a negative affect on the beer’s flavor. So while beer might not need to be handled like milk it never hurts to do what you can to avoid warm or hot storage conditions.
I’m considering a career in brewing. How should I go about this?
The first thing we recommend is taking as many brewery tours as possible so that you can ask questions and understand if it is something that you definitely want to pursue. Most Brewmasters and Head Brewers get some kind of formal training at some point. From there, you can look in to applying and enrolling in a brewing school or at an actual brewery itself. If you are interested in applying at Flying Dog, please email your resume to hr@flyingdogales.com or stop by the brewery in Frederick, MD and fill out an application.
My beer didn’t taste like I expected it to? How do I report this to you?
If you are not satisfied with your Flying Dog beer, we definitely want to know about it. If you would like to report it to us, please go to our website and go to the “Contact Us” section. From there, choose, “Make Contact” and then “I have a question or comment about a recent beer purchase” in the pull down menu. From there, please tell us:
Where and when you purchased the beer
The date code in the lower right corner of the bottle label
What it tasted like
We read all of the emails that come into the brewery and promise that someone will respond to your question or comment.
How do I get nutritional for Flying Dog beers?
All the individual brand pages on the website have the nutritional information listed for each beer.
Please note: The numbers listed are derived from calculations that make an assumption about the nutritional information in beer, not just Flying Dog beer, but beer in general. The assumption is that after fermentation is complete there are carbohydrates remaining in the beer. Of those Carbohydrates, 75% to 80% of those have a "net carb" impact. Since the calculated values are based on this assumption, one should use these numbers as a guideline for the total caloric and carbohydrate values.
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