diff --git a/conda/meta.yaml b/conda/meta.yaml
index 10a2dd33..e6b3289f 100644
--- a/conda/meta.yaml
+++ b/conda/meta.yaml
@@ -22,6 +22,7 @@ requirements:
     - importlib_resources
     - jinja2
     - lxml
+    - packaging
     - pyyaml
     - requests
     - rsync
diff --git a/mache/spack/env.py b/mache/spack/env.py
index ab7b12da..5473743c 100644
--- a/mache/spack/env.py
+++ b/mache/spack/env.py
@@ -3,6 +3,7 @@
 from importlib import resources as importlib_resources
 
 from jinja2 import Template
+from packaging.version import Version
 
 from mache.machine_info import MachineInfo, discover_machine
 from mache.spack.script import get_spack_script
@@ -139,9 +140,13 @@ def make_spack_env(
 
         modules = f'{modules}\nexport TMPDIR={tmpdir}'
 
+    # Use PEP 440 parsing to strip any pre/dev/post release tags and keep only
+    # the base release version (e.g., "1.2.3rc1" -> "1.2.3").
+    version = Version(__version__).base_version
+
     template_args = dict(
         modules=modules,
-        version=__version__,
+        version=version,
         spack_path=spack_path,
         env_name=env_name,
         yaml_filename=yaml_filename,
diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index 35f9300b..51f72466 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -24,6 +24,7 @@ dependencies = [
     "importlib_resources",
     "jinja2",
     "lxml",
+    "packaging",
     "pyyaml",
     "requests",
     "termcolor",
diff --git a/spec-file.txt b/spec-file.txt
index 15f85530..35754b9e 100644
--- a/spec-file.txt
+++ b/spec-file.txt
@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@ python >=3.9
 importlib_resources
 jinja2
 lxml
+packaging
 pyyaml
 requests
 rsync