Use by Dates on Beer

cullenswood

Hi,

I have cans of beer and the use by date is January. Do you reckon these are still safe to drink. How long should beer last. These only seem to have a 6 month shelf life?

Cheers

Max_Damage

I recently drank beer I got in France last April, the best-before date on them was January 2007, and they seemed fine.

As far as I know, if they get 'too long' (as in a couple of months) out of date, the beer can turn your stomach inside-out.

Bateman

Agreed, would say 5 weeks, maybe 6 if I was desperate. Any more than 6 though, and down the sink.

Coileach dearg

I don't take any notice of dates on beer at all, notice how there are best before dates on bottles of water even though they state that they have been flowing in the volcanic mountains of France for thousands of years. Same as the way Guinness is barrelled straight from the liffey.

I drank a a few bottles of Tooheys New there a few weeks ago and later noticed they had actaully been gone off since 2005!!! I'm still alive though!

kenmc

Depends on the beer to be honest. if it was bottle conditioned I'd drink it no worries a couple of years later. some of my homebrew is only getting good now, 1.5 years after I first brewed it. Good beer is like good wine - improves with age.
Doesn't count for bud/miller/coors etc, or any pasteurised beer.

rubadub

I am presuming you mean "best before date" and not "use by date", many use these interchangeably without a thought of what the words mean. "use by" is usually used on products like meat which should be used by a certain date otherwise they can get diseased and cause real sickness. "best before" means just that, it is at its best before that date and usually will only decrease in taste quality after that. If there was no "best before" some retailers would bulk buy to save money, sell years later and give the brand a bad name since the product will not taste great.

Some tins or packs of food have a best before up to 3 years away, yet I know people who think once the clock strikes midnight after that 3 years that it suddenly turns to a mouldy poisonous substance, yet would have gladly eaten it the day before.

Carbon dioxide can escape through the can or bottle, albeit very slowly, whereas PET plastic bottles are far more porous and can go flatter faster.

When making these "best before" the manufaturers are taking into account the worst case scenario they can, they do not want their beer reaching a customer tasting off. Clear glass bottles will go bad in the sun, faster than coloured bottles. Storing at high temperatures has an exponentially adverse affect on most food & drink. Therefore they take the worst case, a retailer storing the beer in the sunny window of his shop, during a heatwave with constant 30-35C heat.
So yes in that case it would taste a bit off after 6 months. But if stored properly it will be good for several years.

pzurdo

Don't worry about the BB date in terms of darker beers, I ofetn find they continue ot improve. I found that the unfortunately difficult to get hold of Red Biddy, tasted superior after the BB date!

I've found it a different matter with largers though.

ApeXaviour

Canned beer, kept in a cool environment can last very very long. Once you haven't been storing it in the hotpress OP it'll be fine.

happy_acid_face

they should be grand, exspecially the higher the alcohol content. Some American beers i've found dont even carry a best before date!

kenmc

happy_acid_face wrote:

they should be grand, exspecially the higher the alcohol content. Some American beers i've found dont even carry a best before date!

presumably cos there's so many preservatives in them! They also don't tend to have ABV on lots of their beer either.

I'd personally only be happy to drink a bottle conditioned one a long time after it's BB date, but I do tend to think "Best before does not mean poisonous after".

FlutterinBantam

relax.. horse it back..there is plenty of " play" in that best before date