Neglected beer....

Well I had a lot going on and I neglected to move my current brew from primary since the end of June. I kept it in my basement and finally have time to keg it. My question is what should I expect? I am fearing mold. Let me know, I want to move this today but I don't want to mess it up anymore than it is.

Keg it.

You should expect it to be awesome! You wouldn't expect a bottle of beer to get all moldy inside after just five months would you?

What kind of beer is it?

I once let a beer sit in a carboy for almost a year before I got around to bottling and it turned out fine.

It's bad. Depending on what type of beer it is, you should send it to me for proper disposal.











or its fine and you should keg it!

Even if the airlock went dry?

Nothing that can hurt you can survive in beer. At the worst, you'll have some mold lilypads floating around on top, which you can skim off with a strainer or just rack out from underneath them.

I think you'll be fine. Hops and alcohol are pretty good at keeping your beer safe and tasty. When you open it up, as long as it doesn't smell like rancid meat, it will be drinkable. At worst, it'll be a little sour or tangy.

underwaterdan said:

Even if the airlock went dry?

Click to expand...

Yep. Bugs can't crawl, only fall even if you poured bacteria and wild yeast onto the airlock with the top off you should be ok. Also there should be a well of CO2 keeping O2 at bay.

Go for it!

Keg and report back. I'm bettin' it's pretty good.

You should expect it to be fine, and perfectly clear. And possibly one of the best beers you ever made. I just bottled one after 5.5 months in the bucket, and it was fine. If you don't keg though, you might want to consider, if it's a high grav beer, adding some more yeast at bottling time, or at least rubbing the racking cane across the bottom of the fermenter to kick up some of the yeast. But your beer should be ok.

I was worried about a beer I just racked after 2 1/2 months because of off-flavors that may have been imparted from resting on the yeast cake for longer than anticipated. I'm glad I found this thread because it has made me relax about my beer!