FoodBanter.com - old beer

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Hi all;
I have some commercially brewed cans of beer in my cabin that could be about 2
years old. Can anyone tell me if beer has a limited shelve life or if it can
become toxic.
When pored into a glass, small woolly looking blobs of brown colour are visible
and when filtered out in a paper towel these blobs smell of hops.
Any information is appreciated.
Thanks
Frank the slow beer drinker

thesnowbaron wrote:
> Hi all;
> I have some commercially brewed cans of beer in my cabin that could be about 2
> years old. Can anyone tell me if beer has a limited shelve life

Well, that's a complicated question- depending on the type of beer,
handling, container, etc. BUT in your case, it's simple- the style of
beers that are canned (almost exclusively) have a very definite shelf
life, altho' it's it differs from brewery to brewery and drinker to
drinker. 3-6 months is usually considered the threshold for "fresh" beer.

or if it can > become toxic.

Nope, doesn't ever become toxic, it's just becomes old, stale beer.
Usually get cloudy and starts to break down, leaving a sediment, as
you've noted below. (In a bottle that's usually easy to see, the can
hides it.)

> When pored into a glass, small woolly looking blobs of brown colour are visible
> and when filtered out in a paper towel these blobs smell of hops.

It's only recently that some breweries have been dating their beers so
that the consumer can see and understand it. Because the ones doing it
the loudest (well, they have the money to) are Coors and Anheuser-Busch,
there's been a sort of backlash among less knowledgable beer drinkers
that it's all just another marketing gimmick.

There ARE beers that can be "cellared" by the consumer and improve with
aging but that does not change the fact that the vaste majority of beer
sold is best consumed as fresh as possible.

old beer--why bother?

I'm sure I'll be corrected by someone on this list if I'm wrong, but I once
heard a homebrewer who worked for a poison-control center allege that there
are no pathogens that can survive in a canned batch of beer, and not likely
to be any in any commercially-bottled batches either. Not to say someone
couldn't directly contaminate a home-brew bottle, but..........

I think he recounted this statement after the poison-control center he
worked with got a call from some woman whose husband found a six-pack of
Pabst Blue Ribbon that was, at the minimum, seventeen years old, and he
claimed he was going to sit down and drink it all that night. I think his
answer was an elaboration of the above, and I remember his specific last
words precisely:

"If the cans aren't bulging, leaking, rusty, covered with fertilizer, or
whatever, then it'd be perfectly safe to drink. However, I'm going to save
him the trouble right now: it's gonna taste like seventeen-year-old Pabst
Blue Ribbon!"

old beer--why bother?

"thesnowbaron" > wrote in message news:<bq90t6> :
> snip

I didn't think the Aussie culture allowed beer to stay around longer
than a few hours anyway.

old beer--why bother?

That is at normal conditions, like home. This beer is stored at my cabin with
canned food
Frank
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"FredG" > wrote in message
om...
: "thesnowbaron" > wrote in message news:<bq90t6> :
: > snip
:
: I didn't think the Aussie culture allowed beer to stay around longer
: than a few hours anyway.