May 15, 2018

How to Find the Expiration Date of Dr Pepper and Snapple


My drink of choice is Pepsi, and I used to drink it all the time. I mean ALL the time. Now I'm trying to eliminate caffeine and soda from my diet, but I still have one every few months. Hubby, on the other hand, loves Dr Pepper. In fact, his entire family loves Dr Pepper. Last year, I bought several 2 liter bottles of each that were flat, no fizz at all. From then on, I started reading the expiration dates on bottles before buying them.

The expiration date on Pepsi and most other drinks are easy to read. There's a stamp on the bottle or lid with a common abbreviation for month and then the day and year.

Finding the expiration of Dr Pepper is a little harder. There is a code on the lid, but I couldn't read it. Or at least I couldn't until the I talked to a man stocking Dr Pepper at the grocery store. He whipped out a decoder card and let me snap a picture so I could use it when I needed to read the code, and now you can have it too. It's not a secret code and it wasn't shared with me in confidence. In fact, once you see it, you'll see how easy it is. The black lines didn't photograph well, but you can fill it in easily. The first column is A-M, without an I because it looks too much like J. Second column is January-December. Third column is J-M,A-H, again no I, and so on with the next columns.

For this blog post, I bought the bottle pictured above. And on the lid are a bunch of numbers.


Now here's the code breaker.


The code on my lid is D8119DP3; under that code is 15:54. I'm going to divide that first group of numbers. D-8-119-DP-3. D means it was made in April. 8 is the last number of the year made, which would be 2018. 119 is the day of the year it was made. The 119th day of 2018 was April 29. There are a lot of date converters online. I used Epoch Converter. I think DP3 is the plant and shift number and 15:54 is the time (military time) it was made. He didn't explain that part to me because all I really wanted to know was when it was made and when it expires.

Now for the expiration date you have to know the shelf life of the product.
  • A product with Aspartame or Aspartame/AceK blends, like diet Dr Pepper, has a shelf life of 3 months.
  • Any product in a plastic bottle has a shelf life of 3 months.
  • A product with sugar or high fructose corn syrup in can or glass bottle has shelf life of 9 months.
  • The 6 month and 12 month codes are for Snapple.
For the man stocking new product and removing expired product, this code is easy. If he were stocking in April, he would look at this chart and remove anything diet or in plastic bottles with code M (December) and older.

Knowing this code now, my Dr Pepper will expire July 29, 2018. But I'm sure Hubby will drink it before then.

Check out Part Two specifically for canned Dr. Pepper.

17 comments:

  1. I didn't know this. Yikes. I've got lots of plastic bottles of water. Not good.

    Have a fabulous day, Marti. ♥

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  2. I keep water around a long time too. I need to rotate it better.

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  3. You'd think they'd be more focused on customer's so that they could read the expiration without a code. No soda in this house for several years now, it's too tempting.

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  4. Do you know how to determine the expiration date on canned Dr. Pepper? On the bottom:
    M7 360HX
    L3 1331

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The expiration date would be September 26, 2018. I'll update this with a new post and full explanation. Hope that helps.

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  5. i have 2 cannned Dr Pepper here. on the bottom MAR1218 1020C8060772 and JAN2218DDC 18:15 1, what are the expiration dates?

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    Replies
    1. I'm sorry edvil, nothing like that on the code sheet I was given. It sure looks like March 12, 2018, doesn't it? Where are you located? I would guess that either Dr. Pepper has a different coding system just for your area, or the company in general is changing their date stamp. I'll start watching here and see if I see anything similar.

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    2. Hi Marti,

      Mach 2018 and January 2018, are these for expiration date or manufacturing date?
      Not aware of these stamping.
      This means that the 2 canned Dr Pepper were already expired?

      Im in the Philippines.

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    3. The way the cans and bottles are stamped here, the stamp is the date manufactured and then you have to figure out the expiration date for yourself. Cans of diet would be 3 months, and cans of sugar/syrup drink would be 9 months. So if they have changed the way they print the date, but not their method, and if they aren't diet drinks, the one with the March date wouldn't be expired until next month and the January can would be expired. But that's just a guess based on the way they do it in the US. The next time you see someone from Dr. Pepper stocking drinks at the store, ask them. The store employees probably won't know. When you find out, please come back and tell me.

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  6. Hi Marti,

    I found these codes in the barcode area
    DP-9019.00117N for Jan2218 and
    DP-9017.03517N for March 1218

    What are these for?

    I'll check in the store employee soon and come back to you.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Interesting. My only guess is that they mark them differently there.

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  7. I'm in Iowa and still can't figure the dates out on soda. The one I have right now reads 08:05 OT4

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Try to ask a Dr. Pepper person stocking them. That's what I did.

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    ReplyDelete
  9. I wish Dr pepper would make it easier to read the exp date I've been getting a lot of them that are flat and no fizz

    ReplyDelete
  10. I bought snapple from vending machine but date at bottom is 29 feb with time 10:50 is that expiration date??

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Where do you live? After seeing the comments above, I think that chart is just for the United States.

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