Your oldest bottled beer?

There always seem to be threads floating around where someone asks how long their homebrew will last before it goes bad or something, and people tend to speculate wildly about it.

My question is, though, what's the oldest bottled homebrew you have actually consumed and how did it taste?

I've been brewing for about 2 and a half years now, and I just noticed this morning in our china cabinet that I saved one bottle from each of my first two batches of homebrew. They are brown bottles and have spent the past 2 + years on a shelf in our dining room, a room that never gets any sunlight. I looked at them and they are both very clear and seem to be sealed well. I don't think I would ever drink them, but I wonder if they would still be good?

I found a bottle the other night that was labeled simply "4". I can't really remember what it was, some kind of pale ale. But, I tossed it in the fridge and tried it; not bad. Wasn't as good as my recent stuff, but that seems to be mostly because it was an early batch, it seemed to hold up reasonably well. Seemed a little maltier that I recalled any of the early batches, I'm guessing because a lot of the hop flavor and bitterness had dropped out of the way. Probably going on two years' old, maybe a little less.

Dave' Imperial Stout has been in the bottle for almost a year now. It keeps getting better! Of course it is a pretty BIG beer.

My buddy was telling me the other day that he found some of his homebrew that he thought it was approx 10 years old. I told him to bring it over. I would like to see how it is. Why not? :fro:

After not brewing for five years, a few months ago I decided to revive the hobby and brew a couple of batches. When I started gathering up everything to get started, I found 2 cases 1 from each batch that I had brewed 5 years ago.

I thought damn is this stuff still any good? Then I said what the hell and threw a few bottles from each batch in the fridge.

The next night I tried them and they still tasted good. They were a little overcarbonated and had a little bit of a twang to them but they were still drinkable.

I think I have about 6 bottles of each batch left.

When I gave a few to a friend I didn't tell him how old they were and he said they were the best beers he had ever had.

I've still got some of my first batch from over a year and a half ago and its still damn good

nothing real old for beer, but I have some mead that's about to turn 10 years old

When we were still living in our old house, and in cleaning up the garage I founf a case of stout from 4-5 years before. It had spent the whole time, forgotten though winter and summer in the garage.

I drank them all. They were still decent. I dont have any left now. >sobs<

I've got 3 18month old Coffee Stouts that i'm deciding if I want to drink.

I've got some barleywine and imperial stout thaat are now 2 years old.

I have some Dubbel over a year old and a bottle or two of a 13+ year old mead...

I've had homebrew at LEAST 12 years old, if not more.

I bought some stuff from a friend who quit brewing at least that long ago, and he said he had 20+ cases of empties I could have with what I bought off him. Sadly, they were not all empty and contained all sorts of brews and even some cream soda.

So we drank them that night out at a party, and some of them tasted ok, most of them tasted like Cherry Robitussin. Much later, when we were pouring them out to clean them and have them ready for a batch, most were big gushers all over my kitchen. They all tasted like Robitussin at that point and we found all kinds of wierd crap floating in a clear bottle of the cream soda. After we saw the floaties, we decided not to sample ANY more of the old stuff and just had a 2+ hour bottle pouring party.

Darker stuff seemed to be better than others, and higher abv beers appeared to taste less horrible than the rest. All were still not good.

I had 3 extra bottles from my first batch...an all extract Newcastle Brown Ale clone. They were sitting in my garage for about 18 months. Exposed to the summer heat and winter cold.

I drank them and they were great.