Anyone ever found any fake beer? I’ve just been into my local off-licence and treated myself to three bottles for a fiver – one Wainwrights and two Rev James

On looking at them though, the two bottles are completely different, despite being produced only hours apart according to the “best before” timestamp (I’m assuming here the the “best before” date is calculated and printed when the beer is bottled). The bottles are a different shape and the labels look s very different, and they’re a different texture

What do you think? Is this genuine or should I pass the word to trading standards / Brains brewery?

They might have it bottled at more than one location.

Worth asking them the question. They might give you free beer as a thank you.

There’s only one way to know for sure. Drink both of them.

Purely for comparison purposes, obviously.

Y’know when you hear about fake cigges and all the crap they throw in em, like floor sweepings and insects and all sorts of stuff.. and fake wine with antifreeze in..I wonder what gets chucked into fake beer? And if i was in your position..which is the real one?
Do you feel lucky?…

Unusual to change both label supply and bottle type mid run.
Perfectly normal to change a roll of labels , and have a very slight difference in paper texture , colour and print quality.
More unusual to change bottle type mid run , as the fill height and label height / position are usually set up the left for the length of the run.

The microdot date stamp is good. It looks authentic and done on the shoulder makes it harder to fake, if was done with a library style hand stamp I would be worried.

There was fake beer on one of those fake Britain or something programs. That was a mexican beer like Sol. The bottles had dodgy printing. They said it was also common to refill old bottles with fake beer. It works well with the Mexican ones as the ‘labels’ are printed directly onto the bottle. I can’t see that brand being faked but you never know.

The one on the left looks more dodgy as its more like the pump badge, on the bottles I’ve got (well empty) you can’t see his hands, that said they are older and may have changed now, I find it hard to believe someone would go to the trouble myself, its not a massive brand and is guess sales are relatively small (dunno as mine were a present). So it probably would not be worth it.

Well, I’ve dropped Brains a line, let’s see what they see. Hopefully it’ll be something easy like there being two bottling machines with different bottles / labels, but maybe not.

Ten hours apart for the bottling, seems reasonable to me that they could have changed the bottles. If they’re going to change them they has to be a point where they do.