I normally drink ale in bottles, but on vacation I don’t want to bring glass down to the beach, so I get beer in cans. The best I can find is Molson Canadian (American version, if it matters) or maybe Heineken. Anyway, I have about five cans of Molson left over from last summer, and we’re going on vacation soon. They’ve been stored in my basement since last summer, where the temperature ranges from 58 in winter to 68 in summer. I usually serve leftovers to my inlaws over the next couple months, who don’t like the decent beer we usually drink, but they’re getting older and haven’t been over here much.
Fresh beer is best, and local is best of all, but it won’t go bad in a year. We drank beer in Vietnam that had been sitting on pallettes in the sun for god knows how long, and it didn’t kill us. Worst stuff I ever drank, but not toxic.
I don’t think they will go bad in the sense of being rotten, but the flavor and carbonation might have gone wonky. They might be skunky or over carbonated - I brew my own beer, and it is good for about 4 months without refrigeration. Past that, the yeast has worked a long time and when you pop the cap it all comes foaming out. I suspect those beers you have are made to have a long shelf life, so they will probably be OK. There are much better canned beers, you know. Guiness makes a canned “draft.”
Blech. No, it isn’t any good any more, not that it was any good to begin with. Beer is a (once) living thing, and after a year it is dead, dead, dead. (Exceptions noted. Molson’s isn’t one of them.) Go by a new case of beach beer and pour those old cans down the drain. I wouldn’t even cook with them.
Yeah, I’d probably toss them. A rarely drink beer but usually have a few cans in my fridge. A few months ago I had a craving for one. Not even one, just a few good swigs. I opened one up, took a big gulp and spit it right into the sink. Awful. Then I realized when it was from. A friend of mine brought it over before she got pregnant and her baby was about 3 or 4 months old at that point. The beer was flat and tasted awful. FTR it was Coors Light.
I tossed the rest and picked up a new 12 pack.
Yes, that’s why I put quotes around it. They also make bottled Guiness, and that’s even worse than the canned. As others pointed out, I think a nice light lager is a good beach beer. Molson’s or something. Dump some lime juice in it and have a chelada.
Seriously, though, I’ve had year-old beers I’ve found in my house, and some were still OK, and others were dump-down-the-drain. The only way to know is to try it. The temperature of your basement is a good sign. Won’t kill you, anyway.
Amen to this—The Guinness cans are not too awful, (though it’s sure as hell not the same as having a pint poured right from the nitro-tap) but the bottled stuff is downright vile.
I think the Guinness in bottles is a different brew altogether (a porter?) than the normal, traditional Guinness stout…
Which bottled Guinness? The Draft with the “smoothifier”, which they used to sell, but I don’t see around any more, the replacement, which doesn’t have the widget, but seems to have a nitrogen charge, which they sell everywhere, or the Guinness Extra Stout (if they even make that anymore).
I’ve had Guinness Foreign Extra Stout, as it’s called in these parts, in the last year or so, if not more recently. It’s still available, and a completely different beer to the original.
Just had one before I opened SD. I drink it with clear room temperature water between sips.
Then I start working on the beer backs. Haven’t found one that doesn’t harsh out the sweet sweet dulcet mellifluousity of the scotch though.
<raises tumbler of Glenfiddich>
A toast to you good sir, “Fair skies, full sails and may you be in Heaven, a half hour before the Devil knows you’re dead.”
