Expiration dates are there for a reason

I had mentioned in an earlier thread that my brother in law gave me a Mr Beer kit that he received as a gift. He told me that he received it about two years ago. When he gave it to me, I noticed that the expiration date on the can of extract was 2002. I figured a new packet of yeast and I might have some extra beer. Well every thing seemed to go ok. It fermented nicely, bubbling through the airlock. Tonight I took a sample to see how it was doing. It had a funny smell but it did smell like beer. So I decided to taste it, eeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwww talk about skunky beer. I guess thats why they have expiration dates.

I doubt old extract would cause a skunky flavor

I made a batch of beer with 6 year old extract and it was soo terrible. It tasted like soy sauce beer and if in any way that sounds good to you you need to rethink it. Man that was gross!!

My personal record is 8 years. Made a stout out of two cans of Pale Ale extract. The extract was almost black. Drinkable, but not great.

You do know that every product with an expiration date printed on it turns to poison on that date.
AP

I made a PM double IPA with some extract of questionable age (someone gave it to me). It didn't have a bad taste, but the fermentability went WAY down. I couldn't get it below 1.038 FG!

I received a can of Coopers extract once. I put it aside and forgot about it. A few years later or so, I thought about it (for some reason) and looked for it. I found it where I thought I might, but it had bloated up a bit. I decided against using it.


TL

Fish said:

I made a batch of beer with 6 year old extract and it was soo terrible. It tasted like soy sauce beer and if in any way that sounds good to you you need to rethink it. Man that was gross!!

Click to expand...

Yeah, I did that with 3 year old extract recently that a customer gave me as an experiment. I had to dump it before secondary.