Bottle beer best by date

[Muddy Brews]

I have my first brew in the fermenter mini fridge. Brewed 4.14.25 and plan to bottle 5.3.25. And plan to try my first bottle about 3 weeks after.
Is there a rule of thumb to how long the beer in the bottles stays good to drink? 2 weeks, 2 months, 4 months,...... ???

Thanks in advance for your insight.

 

[lumpher]

The main rules of thumb... strictly that... are darker = longer and stronger = longer. A light ale might be ready in 2 weeks, and an RIS might take a year. However, these are strictly general rules. Wheat beers usually mature fast. Rye takes a long time. A lot of variables to consider. Most ales are good.at fermenting 2 weeks and 2.weeks aging in bottles or kegs, but most get better with age, except IPA...and wheat... and light beers... and... in general, most stay good for months after bottling.

 

[worlddivides]

Depends on the style and how much oxygen got in there. Hoppy styles such as IPAs and APAs tend to have the shortest shelf lives, while higher ABV styles such as Russian Imperial Stouts and barleywines tend to have very long shelf lives with sours and wild ales having the longest shelf live. Some sours are literally more than 5 years old and taste amazing. On the other hand, a hazy IPA might taste amazing a few weeks after packaging but taste just okay a few months later and godawful a year later.

 

[Hoochin'Fool]

Depends on the style and how much oxygen got in there. Hoppy styles such as IPAs and APAs tend to have the shortest shelf lives, while higher ABV styles such as Russian Imperial Stouts and barleywines tend to have very long shelf lives with sours and wild ales having the longest shelf live. Some sours are literally more than 5 years old and taste amazing. On the other hand, a hazy IPA might taste amazing a few weeks after packaging but taste just okay a few months later and godawful a year later.

My experience with the best (so far!) Cascade/Citra IPA that I ever made:
2 weeks after bottling, "wow, this is nice"
3 weeks+ "really good, never used Citra before, but I sure recognize it from other beers I've tried, a touch sweeter than I anticipated"
4 weeks "Citra has clearly faded, but the beer is still delicious, not sweet any more"
5 weeks "Citra completely gone, beer still tasty"

Luckily, only 4 more bottles left, but good data for planning future brews for specific occasions.


EDIT to describe my complete surrender to oxygenation: I do BIAB, slow-chill, ferment 2 weeks in a leaky plastic bucket, open the bucket to add my dry-hops, wait another 5 to 10 days, transfer to bottling bucket w/ priming sugar, and then bottle.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

Is there a rule of thumb to how long the beer in the bottles stays good to drink? 2 weeks, 2 months, 4 months,...... ???

Storing bottles in the fridge will extend the shelf life. My experience is that it doubles shelf life but I've seen numbers that suggest longer.

 

[hungupdown]

Active yeasts in unfiltered beers can act as biological oxygen scavengers, and extend shelf life by prolonging flavour stability.
So hefeweizens & other pale hazy beers, can still have good shelf life.

Lever top bottles of my Schneider Weisse, seem just as good over a year from bottling.

When diong imperial stout over 15%, where some bottles might be kept over 5 years, I've tried hot 'wax' dipping, to enhance the seal. Having seen that's done commercially for bottling higher strengths.

The yeasts in the tests, we're cultivated from bottle residues in unfiltered commercial beers.
Enhancing Flavour Stability in Beer Using Biological Scavengers Part 2

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

but I've seen numbers that suggest longer.

Here's another observation from an old, yet new, book:

Spoiler: Did you three three additional things in the image?

1. howtobrew.com is back
2. it's 3rd edition (not 1st)
3. it has author notes
... and DuckDuckGo supports site specific search

 

[Muddy Brews]

Here's another observation from an old, yet new, book:

View attachment 873759

Spoiler: Did you three three additional things in the image?

1. howtobrew.com is back
2. it's 3rd edition (not 1st)
3. it has author notes
... and DuckDuckGo supports site specific search

I just started reading the howtobrew.com book and am enjoying it so far. Just finished the introduction and chapter 1 brewing with malt extract.
Thank you BrewnWKopperKat

 

[RM-MN]

Here's another observation from an old, yet new, book:

View attachment 873759

Spoiler: Did you three three additional things in the image?

1. howtobrew.com is back
2. it's 3rd edition (not 1st)
3. it has author notes
... and DuckDuckGo supports site specific search

I find this to be incorrect as my bottled beers are all stored at room temp for months if not years. While my pale ales lose their aroma within about 3 months, the beer is still good to drink until it is all gone, probably at the end or a year. Some beers improve with age, not go stale. A good stout that I made was still improving in flavor at the end of 2 years. It would have been interesting to see if it continued to improve but we drank the last bottle.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

Storing beer cold slows down the stalling process.

 

[worlddivides]

I can't really criticize Palmer for that line because it's in a book for those starting out with homebrewing, and "as a general rule" I think it is true. Sure, that's not going to apply at all to sour and wild ales that taste better at 3 years than they did at 6 months (and weren't even bottled until long after the point that statement would say they've already started to go stale). And I'll also say that in the case of a lot of barleywines and imperial stouts that taste great at 2 years, it's still better (when possible) to store them at cooler temperatures to make the aging process go more smoothly. It doesn't necessarily need to be a fridge, but it should be closer to wine cellar temperatures than to mid-day on the surface of the sun temperatures. "Room temperature" can be fine for some beers, but while a lot of people might think of "room temperature" as 65F to 75F, it can also be 100F or 40F, especially for those with limited heating or air conditioning abilities. My "room temperature" is usually the same as the outdoor temperature for roughly half of the year. When I lived in Northern California my room temperature was the same as the outdoor temperature maybe 90% of the year and in Southern California my room temperature was the same as the outdoor temperature 100% of the year.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

continuing on a side topic ...

EDIT to describe my complete surrender to oxygenation: I do BIAB, slow-chill, ferment 2 weeks in a leaky plastic bucket, open the bucket to add my dry-hops, wait another 5 to 10 days, transfer to bottling bucket w/ priming sugar, and then bottle.

I have a "nemesis" /1/ recipe that I haven't brewed for a while (currently two "process changes" ago).

Recently (and outside of HomeBrewTalk) there are topics on bottle conditioning (not re-packaging from a keg) with posts from home brewers who are actively competing and winning on a regular basis.

It's probably time for me to package up those new ideas and brew "side by side by side" (old process, current process, new techniques).

Maybe more to say in a different topic in a couple of weeks.

---

nemesis (noun)

1. ...
2. ...
3. An opponent that cannot has yet to be beaten or overcome.

 

[RM-MN]

Storing beer cold slows down the stalling process.

Where will I store my 15 cases of beer that I make in my "brewing season" when the ground is frozen and I can't farm. Some of that beer has to last from March to Ocrober or November when I get time to brew again.

 

[Hoochin'Fool]

It's probably time for me to package up those new ideas and brew "side by side by side" (old process, current process, new techniques).

Maybe more to say in a different topic in a couple of weeks.

Looking forward to it! In fact, I was just thinking of messaging you directly about how to dose with ascorbic acid at bottling time... I can wait for the full write-up, however.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

I was just thinking of messaging you directly about how to dose with ascorbic acid at bottling time

1/64 tsp ascorbic acid per bottle.

context for other current & future readers. Currently (early 2025), I brew 2.5 gal (or less) and dose individual bottles with table sugar, CBC-1 (1/64 tsp per bottle) and ascorbic acid. The bottles are held at 75F for the first week to speed up the process. And, FWIW, I did multiple combinations of split bottle conditioning to end up with this process - I found that ascorbic acid (AA) helped in combination with CBC-1 & conditioning at 75F. It (AA) didn't seem to be as helpful by itself when talking 2 to 3 weeks to carbonate.