Is it possible to date the Balvenie 12yo single bbl?

[Tipsymutt]

hi all. Just found your site and it looks awesome! Have a question for you guys:

Is it possible to tell what date (year) a bottle of the Balvenie 12 yo single barrel was distilled and/or bottled in. I watched a review that was a few years old and noticed that my cask number i just purchased was quite a bit lower, then saw another with a much lower cask number from not too long ago. So... do cask numbers have anything to do with dates, or is it all random? Also, I think with Springbank, you can find the date via the %ABV. Any chance Balvenie does this?

Thank you

[Alexppp]

Most distilleries number their casks from scratch every year, so the number itself will only tell you how late in that year the cask is from, relative to other casks from the same year.

As for ABV, I know most distilleries say they lose roughly 2% ABV per year but it's a very inexact science. Casks stored in hotter and less humid parts of warehouses will lose water quicker than alcohol for example (or at least will lose alcohol at a lower rate compared to casks stored in greater humidity) etc. You could easily encounter cask strength 18 and 12 year-olds with roughly the same ABV for instance.

[MattS]

If you have sufficient information you'll likely find further bottle information on Whiskybase

https://www.whiskybase.com/whiskies/distillery/1/balvenie

[Dave h]

Can you look at glass bottle, around the bottom there will be laser etched print at time of bottling.
Starting with L
If you can post that up here.
The next letter in the code is the bottling year.

B was used in 1992. Following letter is the following year to Z in 2015. Letter O is not used.
And restarts on A in 2016

The code also tells the filling date and time in later numbering.
The time is HR:MM:SS in the end detail.
The preceding 4 numbers to the time is the date and month 3112 would be 31 December