Since McCormick's consumer products sold in grocery stores have had expiration dates on them since 2004, the calculator on the McCormick web site will not work on food service packaging. If you are trying to determine the age of a McCormick product purchased in a grocery store and it does not have an expiration date or a best by date, it was made prior to 2004 and should be discarded.For the products we sell at Spice Place, you must use the method described below for McCormick food service products.
Unlike McCormick consumer division products, which began printing expiration dates on products in 2004, most of the McCormick Food Service, McCormick Culinary and McCormick for Chefs products are not labeled with expiration dates. This is because the intended customer base of these items are food service facilities which will often use up a single bottle of spices within a few days or weeks. McCormick Food Service, Culinary and McCormick for Chefs products are coded with a production date and plant code which can be used to determine the date of production. Note that the production date only contains a single character for year not a decade of production. So it is necessary to determine the decade by looking at the packaging as well. In the table below are 3 different bottles of McCormick Food Service packaging. You're interested in the shape of the bottle and not the label (which varied over time as McCormick changed artwork).
You may quickly determine year of production by looking at the table below:
Select the bottle type from the caption above and enter the 6 character production date code. Then press the Calculate button. If successfully calculated, the date will be shown at top of page in the green message line.
Package Type: Required. Choose based on picture shown in table above. Bottle Type B Bottle Type A
Production Date Code: Required.
Generally, herbs and spices do not go bad or get rancid. However, the amount of flavor and aroma can decay over time. Below are general guidelines on how long herbs and spices will retain their best flavor and aroma. Depending on your taste preferences you may be able to use spices long after the below time frames.