How to find and understand the bottling date

The beers we produce undergo a secondary fermentation in the bottle and in general have an extremely long shelf life that varies between beer styles. For example, the life durations of our beers are: Blanche de Chambly 1 to 2 years, Maudite 3 to 5 years and Trois Pistoles 5 to 10 years. Even beyond these periods, we have regularly found our beers that conserve their quality and may still be described as excellent*. For this reason, we cannot justly impose a "best before" date and prefer to mark the date on which the beer was bottled.

How to find and understand the bottling date
This is situated on the lower left part of the back label, printed in light grey about 1/16 of an inch above the bar code. The code has one letter followed by three figures. The letter A denotes January, B denotes February and so on. The letter I is not used in order to avoid any confusion with the figure 1. For the three figures that follow the letter, the first 2 give the date of the month the beer was bottled and the last number denotes the year.

For example: M191 = December, 19, 2001

*In the case of the 750 ml bottle, the expansion and hermetic qualities of the champagne cork are important factors for the conservation of the product.