5 Year Old Beer

I found a few bottles of Amber Ale in my garage that I brewed about 5-6 years ago. I live in Western, Pennsylvania, so the temperature range in my garage in any given year will span from below 0 to near 100 degrees f.

Should I drink them?

certianlly try one of them...

Not going to hurt you, but probably is not going to taste great. Give it a try.

Below 0F? Beer freezes not much lower than water does. I'd be surprised if the caps were still sealed with that kind of temp fluctuation in storage.

Beer doesn't go "bad" unless your sanitization is weak. Since nothing PATHOGENIC can exist in beer/wine/cider/mead, there should never be a reason to ever fear tasting something like this, no matter how old it is. Yeah, it may taste like crap, it may be vinegar, but NOTHING that could happen, could ever cause harm to anyone.

It's not worth passing by on something that could be amazing, because of fear.....

Noone thinks twice about drinking old wine.....


Homebrew is no different from commercial beer. Properly stored it can last and be drinkable for 100s of years.

To put it in perspective, in the Dec 07 Zymurgy Charlie Papazian reviewed bottles of homebrew going back to the first AHC competition that he had stored, and none of them went bad, some had not held up but most of them he felt were awesome...We're talking over 20 years worth of beers.

This is a great thread about one of our guys tasting 4-5 years of his stored brew.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f14/revisiting-my-classics-160672/

And I brewed an og 1.150, 150 IBU barleywine that I won't be opening for 5 years.

Not to mention the fact that there are vertical tasting for certain beers like Stone epic, where people collect each years beer and then sample a flight of them going back in time.

I just had this expericence not too long ago... We tried 48 year old beer today. One was interesting and drinkable, and one was gnarly.

Mbowenze has a thread about tasting an over 100 year old beer recently. And In my history thread there's a video of the OZ and James Drink to Britain tv series where they taste a beer older than that.....one that goes back to Napoleanic times iirc.

It all depends on how they were stored.

Revvy said:

Homebrew is no different from commercial beer. Properly stored it can last and be drinkable for 100s of years.

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Maybe good commercial beer. I once had a Bud Light that had been in the back of my cousin's fridge for about a year and it tasted horrific. :cross:

edit: Well, more horrific than fresh Bud at least.

I bet it tastes like molasses

Soy sauce is more likely

I hope you fill us in! I want to know what it tastes like!

I found an Amber Ale, which wad just okay. But honestly, it was my first attempt and it wasn't very good 5 years ago. I also found a Canadian Lager, which was fantastic. Much better than I remember.

Okay is better than satan's monkey-ass taste. Nice time-capsule though.Wish i had a forgotten treasure. Any idea's what was in it specifically?

Yeah, thankfully no Satan or monkey ass. I know that the Amber Ale was a LME kit. The Canadian was all LME also, but the employee at the LHBS ran around the store grabbing ingredients and I had no input so I don't recall the recipe.
Unfortunately, there was only one Lager and 6 Ales, which are going down the drain now.

Uhh,satan's monkey ass goin down the drain?

I just found a case of bombers bring spring cleaning. The label aid 6/16/06. I couldn't wait to try one. I popped it open and it off gassed a lot. It tasted very good, maybe better than before although after 300 batches it is tough to recall one from the other.

I was very surprised and I survived to tell about it.

Cheers.

M

Don't know that amber ales are made for extended frozen cellering but it won't kill you.

What's the best method for long-term storage? I've been keeping a single bottle of each of my brews so far, but they're just in a cupboard above my fridge.

markvyoung said:

r.

I was very surprised and I survived to tell about it.

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Why? Why do folks have this silly belief that somehow old homebrew is dangerous? Noone thinks twice about old wine, homemade or otherwise, nor do folks have problems with "vertical tastings" is it's by rogue or stone?

Do folks just not get simple facts? That 1) Homebrew is no different than commercial beer, or wine for that matter. We use the SAME ingredients and the SAME methods, just on a smaller scale. 2) And most important nothing pathogenic can exist in beer/wine/cider/mead.

Do these two simple premises escape most of you? If this is the case, if this basic understanding is missing, then the folks writing the books, and those of us teaching, are failing the hobby....

There's no reason for folks to fear it. It might not have stood the test of time, but it's not gonna hurt you folks.

If you have the oppurtunity, don't fear it, embrace it.

Im thinking the worse thing that can happen when you open those bottles is you might have some malt vinegar to put on your french fries.

AgentHubcap said:

What's the best method for long-term storage? I've been keeping a single bottle of each of my brews so far, but they're just in a cupboard above my fridge.

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I would store them somewhere cool,oxycaps help,more hops help,maybe minimal headspace like 1/2 inch,higher abv beers.Ive had no bad results with many of beers i made so far that i tried over a year,alot were not hoppy,high abv, had 2 inch head space and were not stored much below 60 or oxycaps. Still great beers.Dark and somewhat cool works.
I find above my fridge tends to be the warmest place in the house usually.Not really ideal storage conditions unless you wanted them to carb quicker.

jonmohno said:

I would store them somewhere cool,oxycaps help,more hops help,maybe minimal headspace like 1/2 inch,higher abv beers.Ive had no bad results with many of beers i made so far that i tried over a year,alot were not hoppy,high abv, had 2 inch head space and were not stored much below 60 or oxycaps. Still great beers.Dark and somewhat cool works.
I find above my fridge tends to be the warmest place in the house usually.Not really ideal storage conditions unless you wanted them to carb quicker.

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I could probably stick them in the garage, but I'm not sure that would be much better. I hate not having a basement.

Revvy said:

...2) And most important nothing pathogenic can exist in beer/wine/cider/mead....

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Can't be true. I drank 18 pints of my hop-burst APA last night and woke up this morning sick as a dog.

barneygumble said:

Im thinking the worse thing that can happen when you open those bottles is you might have some malt vinegar to put on your french fries.

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how are you going to get vinegar without a mother sample introduced?

To add to the storage question, dipping the capped bottle in wax should help to ensure a great seal and that the bottle keeps.

November said:

Can't be true. I drank 18 pints of my hop-burst APA last night and woke up this morning sick as a dog.

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That would be from alcohol toxicity not pathogens-and damn! 18 pints? Good God! I was sick as a dog when ive drank 12 ish miller lites sometimes back in my day.

amandabab said:

how are you going to get vinegar without a mother sample introduced?

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It was said a bit tongue in cheek. If acetobacter gets into the batch and turns it sour over a long storage and o2 infiltration from old seals, it will turn to vinegar, but its not a harmful vinegar to your body, and is basically just malt vinegar.

edmanster said:

I bet it tastes like molasses

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and no hop favor...