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crazy julian date code?

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unionrdr

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The Cooper's English Bitter I brewed yesterday gave their modified Julian date as "13514". Meaning the 135th day of 2014? One calculator I tried gave a calendar date of November 17, 1895! Another even crazier one gives me December 31, 4677 BC! All the calculators I've tried are screwy at best. The yeast seems basically to be a year old or so. Pitched last evening & no action yet, & it's been about 12 hours. I rehydrated it & pitched at about 1 degree's difference. Not so much concerned about that as this modified julian date code doesn't work wit the math.
**By looking up the calendar for 2014, I counted it out to May 15, 2014, starting January 1st. What's up with these calculators?
 
The Cooper's English Bitter I brewed yesterday gave their modified Julian date as "13514". Meaning the 135th day of 2014. One calculator I tried gave a calendar date of November 17, 1895! Another even crazier one gives me December 31, 4677 BC! All the calculators I've tried are screwy at best. The yeast seems basically to be a year old or so. Pitched last evening & no action yet, & it's been about 12 hours. I rehydrated it & pitched at about 1 degree's difference. Not so much concerned about that as this modified julian date code doesn't work wit the math.

I read it as May (13514) 13th (13514) 2014 (13514).

Your edit beat my post.:mug:
 
Hm...interesting. I hadn't thought of reading it that way. I checked a sticky by PB2 ( Cooper's resident tech guy)on their forums, but it didn't explain the date code in any detail that was readily apparent. Idk, maybe a read it wrong?
 
Another even crazier one gives me December 31, 4677 BC!

Actually, not that crazy. Astronomers use the Julian Day Number and define it as the number of days starting from noon Greenwich Mean Time on January 1, 4713 BC. It gets around trying to work out times between events given the multiple changes to calendars over the past few millennia.

If you add 13,514 days to that you end up with 4677 BC December 31 (Friday). The Julian date for your post (12:42 GMT Sep 13 would be JD 2457279.029167).

http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/JulianDate.php

However, there are several other JD systems. Most of IT use the Unix version which starts midnight Jan 1, 1970, the Smithsonian start theirs midnight Nov 17, 1858, and NASA starts midnight May 24, 1968. Complete dog's dinner, really.

Anyway... 13514 days of Unix would at best put the date in the 70's so I reckon your correct that its ddmyy and so 13th 5 (may) 2014 (but I guess it could also be yymdd and so 14th May 2013).

I wish I knew as much about beer as I do about such trivia as this. After all, I really did spend a lot of time in the company of beer at college.
 
Yeah, this dating system can be really confusing. Seems like it's not exactly standardized. I pitched the rehydrated yeast @ 8:14PM last evening. About 45 minutes ago, the airlock centerpiece nearly pegged @ 20C (68F). Temp strip on Cooper's Micro Brew Fv is in Celsius. So I converted to Fahrenheit by the formula (C X 1.8) + 32= F. So the yeast is either one or two years old plus a couple months?...
 
I always have to break out the chart for Julian dates. Unfortunately it is a pretty popular method of date coding. I'm not a fan of people putting it on consumable shelf items like beer or beer kits because most people aren't going to take the time to calculate it out and they run the risk of buying an expired item.
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Handy chart, thanks! It seems to back up what I think I remember being told. Haven't used Cooper's yeast in a while.
 
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