Mike's Hard Lemonade - A refreshing twist and secret date code. Cheers!

Take a look at the following email correspondence between myself and an amiable Mike's Hard Lemonade representative. I wrote this company to see if their playful, down to earth image was a marketing fabrication or truth. Turns out they are a responsive company with a sense of humor.
-----Original Message-----
From: massemailTest@mikeshard.com [mailto:massemailTest@mikeshard.com]
Sent: October 4, 2009 4:18 PM
To: mike's Consumer Relations
Subject: New Comment submitted

Name: me
Email: me
Subject: Pomegranate Lemonade 10th Anniversary

Message: I enjoy drinking a Mike''s hard lemonade to complement the excellent local beers available in the town of Asheville, NC.
I have recently enjoyed several of your other varieties including a new favorite Pomegranate Lemonade, which I purchased at a local grocery store.
After opening the bottle, I noticed a code on the underside of the cap, with a message saying "enter at mikeshard.com". I usually ignore such marketing strategies, but I thought that I would give it a try, just this once, for Mike''s.
I was perplexed and then disappointed when I navigated to the website and realized that the contest was over.
I was left wondering if I was sold older Mike''s Hard Pomegranate Lemonade, or if the contest had been ended prematurely.
Thank you for your time.


Hey there Will,

Thanks so much for writing in and for the very nice e-mail. To answer your questions, neither one actually. Mike's products stay fresh as a daisy for over a year so chances that it's too old is slim but I'll send you our little code anyway so you can tell just for fun. As far as the contest goes, it ran from May 6th to September 1st but there is actually a law that states that we cannot ask the retailers to pull the product just because it still advertises the sweepstakes. Once they have it, it's in their hands unless of course there is a recall or something to that effect. Our sincere apologies that you didn't get to participate in the sweepstakes, hopefully you'll be able to next time. If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

You can determine the freshness of your mike's(r) products by doing the following:

The batch code is assigned based on the date of bottling and is applied in black ink to the neck of the bottle. The batch code is derived using the following table:

Batch Code Example:
B1905XXXX XX:XX FL

B= (month) February
19= (day of month - 2 digits) 19th
05= (year) 2005

XXXX= Internal digits
XX:XX = time
FL= saleable in Florida


A= January G= July
B= February H= August
C= March J= September
D= April K= October
E= May L= November
F= June M= December

Once you have determined the batch code date on the bottle - which is the date it was created, then you can do the math to determine how long it has been bottled before you've consumed it.

The following is the optimum freshness life for mike's products:

mikes' hard lemonade (r), mike's hard lime(r), mike's light hard lemonade(r) = 9 months
mikes' hard cranberry lemonade(r), mike's hard berry(r) = 12 months

Cheers,

Mike's Consumer Relations