Just had a month old Chimay Blue...

Endovelico said:

Forgot to close this one, so it spent a full month on the fridge.
Today i tasted it and it was just fowl, it was turning into a brownish color and it tasted like liquid feces. It actually had a strong semi-pleaseant smell (compared to the rest) of Cider / Apples.

My question is, what exactly is most likely to have happened? I thought that once fermented the acidic / alcoholic nature of the brew made it impossible to be "infected" by wild yeast and Bacteria.

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dontman said:

What does that mean "forgot to close this one" and "spent a month on the fridge" Do you mean you left an open bottle sitting on top of your fridge?

and "tasted . . . fowl"? Like chicken? JK on this last comment

No it is not at all impossible to infect a fermented beer. There are plenty of types of spores and wild yeasts and bacteria that can turn an unprotected beer foul. Besides, the alcohol will evaporate out of an opened beer.

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CBBaron said:

Fermented beer can be infected by several organism that will make it taste quite bad. However none of these are human pathogens. So you won't die from drinking the beer but it may taste bad. However it doesn't take an infection to make it taste bad. A flat oxidized beer will also taste pretty bad.

The part about pathogens was important in ancient times because pathogens can survive in fresh water and due to sanitary practices at the time drinking the water could make you quite ill or kill you. Beer was safer.

Craig

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