How old is too old for homebrew?

I got 4 cases of bottles filled with homebrew from someone. The date on the cases say it was bottled in the mid nineties. Some is stout some is British ale some is something else. It still has fizz and doesnt seem to bad to the little taste. Anything I should worry about if its drank. I will probably just dump it for the bottles, but just wanted some conversation.

To put it in perspective, in the Dec 07 Zymurgy Charlie Papazian reviewed bottles of homebrew going back to the first AHC competition that he had stored, and none of them went bad, some had not held up but most of them he felt were awesome...We're talking over 20 years worth of beers.

This is a great thread about one of our guys tasting 4-5 years of his stored brew.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f14/revisiting-my-classics-160672/

And I brewed an og 1.150, 150 IBU barleywine that I won't be opening for 5 years.

Not to mention the fact that there are vertical tasting for certain beers like Stone epic, where people collect each years beer and then sample a flight of them going back in time.

Nothing pathogenic can grow in beer. So if they taste fine drink them, if not, dump them...

If it doesn't taste bad, why dump it? You're going to get the bottles anyways, might as well enjoy some free beer I say.

Some is stout you say? And some is british ale?

dump it and save the bottles

I have a 15 year old Barleywine that I open a bottle of occasionally. Some are amazing, some aren't worth drinking.

Depending on the style and the quality of the brewer's methods, it could be oxidized crap, or an amazing experience.

If you like it enough to drink it, then go ahead. If not, I would not think twice about dumping for the bottles.

Bottom line is it won't hurt you.

I had a few BMC beers from like 2001 and besides having a very stale flavor, there was nothing really wrong. And that was a LIGHT beer style. I poured them out, because I had plenty of beer that was not stale tasting.

I picked up some old, unlabeled (in a way I could understand at least) bottles from a club member who had passed away a couple of years ago. Mostly sours and meads. Some were great, some were crap. I just opened a bottle, tried a little, and then either drank it or dumped it. If you get through a couple of each kind and they are crap, lesson learned and dump it all.

You are not going to die or anything.

Yes there is something to worry about. You could get very drunk. You also certainly will die, but the beer isn't likely to change that by much except you may die happier.:cross: