homebrew's long shelf life

I have a simple question. It seems that, based on what I have read in books and on these forums, homebrewed beer has a much longer shelf life than commercially brewed beer you buy in the store- why is this, especially considering commercial beer is pasteurized?

In the past, I've always thought of beer having a pretty steady decline in freshness...whereas all I seem to hear about homebrew is "just continues to get better with time" and "your beer should stay fresh for at least 6 months".

Just how does it do it??

sdufford said:

I have a simple question. It seems that, based on what I have read in books and on these forums, homebrewed beer has a much longer shelf life than commercially brewed beer you buy in the store- why is this, especially considering commercial beer is pasteurized?

In the past, I've always thought of beer having a pretty steady decline in freshness...whereas all I seem to hear about homebrew is "just continues to get better with time" and "your beer should stay fresh for at least 6 months".

Just how does it do it??

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It might take quite a while for the beer to get from the brewery, to your glass. Also the only things that get better with time are bigger beers, and beers that sucked in the first place. Good beers, (such as stone ruination) are at their prime after its brewed! as with home brew, sometimes it takes a while for the yeast to clean up the "mistakes" of the brew

The flavor of beer changes over time. It always has, and it always will. With homebrew, that's an expectation. With commercial beer, that is generally viewed as a fault.

Yep. Some homebrew is still better without a lot of aging and it has more to do with the style than whether or not it's a commercial beer or not. You lose hop aroma over time, some beers like a lot of wheats and hefes are best consumed on the young side, whereas bigger and more complex beers may not fully come around for a year. It all just depends.

I'll tell you why homebrew lasts longer than commercial brew...WE DON'T USE PRESERVATIVES!!!

Homebrew beer is alive and pasteurized beer is dead. Dead things decay a lot faster than living.

Nurmey said:

Homebrew beer is alive and pasteurized beer is dead. Dead things decay a lot faster than living.

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That could be it too...

It's not true. A Belgian strong, barleywine, Russian imperial stout, or sour kriek gets better with time. I had a great 1999 Alesmith Grand Cru a month ago. A homebrewed super hoppy IPA loses hop flavor and aroma just as quickly as the bottle of Pliny that has "do not age" warnings plastered all over it. And the vast majority of commercial beers have no preservatives other than hops, and many are living.

That said, there are a couple of reasons that it seems like homebrew ages better. First, most beer is fine aging a few weeks or months; commercial beer has often done that already by the time it's aged, shipped to a wholesaler, sold to a retailer, stocked, shelved, and sold to you. It's almost never too green. Second, brewing at home is less tightly controlled and more likely to have real flaws that will age out with time--most commercial breweries are dialed in via repetition to the point where that's not an issue.

The green beer thing is the big on-once you learn not to rush things, you shouldn't need tons of aging for most semi-normal styles.

depends on the commercial beer you're comparing our brew to. BMC is fast fermented, filtered and rushed to the store. it has almost no hops, and hops are a natural sort of preservative.

there's also very little malt flavor.

So, those american light lager beers have no flavors to really mature/meld...they can be drank as soon as they are carbed.

and many light light home brews like Hefeweizen, Kolsch or many pale ales are best 'young' before the delicate flavors fade (or you lose too much of that dry hop in the pale)..while a stout or barleywine might need a full year to even taste 'right' let alone 'peak flavor'.

the BMC crowd thinks 'yesterday's born on date = perfect' ...but the true beer afficionado's out there know better.

According to wikipedia:
Filtered beer tends to have a relatively short shelf life, rarely more than a year, as many compounds in the sterile beverage break down into unpleasant tasting ones. Live yeast inside the bottle acts against these processes, giving the beverage a much longer shelf life. A good bottle conditioned beer can maintain its drinkability for many years, and some can be aged for decades.

Makes sense, because (for example) if you have a small amount of oxygen going on in your beer from racking or what have you, then your yeast can use it up. If you keg your beer (especially if you filter it), then there are not as many active yeast cells in the beer anymore, flaws that they would have consumed in a bottle conditioned beer become more apparent.

I think what's missing is the timeline here. What's day 1 of a beer? For a commercial beer, its the day it leaves the brewery, it could very well be weeks, and in extreme cases, a year old.

While home brew also has to, in most setups, age, just for it to carbonate. So day 1 for a homebrewer, might really be like week 5 or a commercial beer, just because of the different processes.

However, homebrew probably ages different than commercial beer, with flavors changing while commercial beers are probably more consistent.

Thanks for all the good input!

Just to clarify though, when I mention commercial beer's shelf life, I am thinking of from "born on date" to roughly 110 days or so on- not thinking of it in the sense that it may take 3 months before it even gets to you. So the big brewers already state a max shelf life of around 4 months, out the door.

I think it's mainly because commercial beer is often stored warm in a wholesaler's warehouse or warm on the retailer's shelf for it's entire post-brewery life. As opposed to homebrew which is mostly stored in a cool dark basement or closet until put into the fridge. Commercial beer is not pampered like homebrew is.

One more consideration that comes to mind is that it's harder to get a big elaborate bottling machine perfectly clean and sanitized than it is to clean and sanitize your homebrew bottling equipment.

Oh, and the live yeast thing is probably an important factor, too.