I drink beer fairly regularly, but I never paid much attention to the bottling dates printed on the case. In fact, until recently I didn’t even know they were there. So: how fresh should a beer be when you buy it? Just today I noticed that what I’m drinking was brewed in July 2000… is this par for the course? When would one start to notice that a beer is too old?
Thanks guys…
The “Born On Dates” that major beer companies stamp on their products were implemented as a response to the burgeoning micro-brew industry a few years back.
To wit: major label brews (Budweiser, Miller, etc.) move their products off of shelves quicker than micro-brews. These big companies exploit this fact by trying to make customers believe newer=better tasting. As far as I can tell, this is just a marketing ploy. Beer is still fine several months after it’s brewed; what you have to worry about is “skunking,” when beer is being refrigerated and warmed again – resulting in a nasty flavor.
So, bottoms up, and don’t stop drinking micro-brews just because the Big Guys tell you the Small Guys’ stuff has been sitting around.
But still, beer does eventually go bad, so I would pay attention to the expiration date (not the bottling date) which is also found on virtually all bottles of beer around the world. I wouldn’t wait too much longer than that. Also as a general rule of thumb base on my own observations anyway, the closer you are to a brewery (of real beer, not mass-market wastewater!) the fresher the beer will be.
Cheers!
I don’t like some lots of Bud, because it’s TOO new. It’s still sugary tasting if it hasn’t aged at all. I try to avoid the newest cases and go for ones a few months older. No nasty sugar taste.
–Tim
There are some specialty beers that are designed to improve with age, but most beers should be consumed within 6 months of bottling/canning. If I remember correctly from a book on beer brewing & evaluation I read a fews years ago, skunkiness isn’t caused by repeated warming/chilling, but by being ‘light-struck’. UV radiation breaks down a chemical in the hops which creates the skunky or rotten egg smell and taste. Even the light from fluorescent tubes in a store’s chiller can hurt the beer over time. Green and brown glass helps, but they can still get light-struck given enough exposure. The effect is most noticable in hoppy beers like Beck’s and not in under hopped wee like Corona.
Once that’s gone what the hell is left Tim?
Seriously, saying Bud needs to ‘age’ before it’s good is one of the funnier things I’ve read lately. I mean, what about beachwood aging?
peepthis has got it right. It’s simply a marketing ploy that has no real basis in anything important. Most beer is consumed long before it expires. That is, if it’s stored correctly and kept out of the sun.
The horrible, horrible flavor that says “Tim, you’re hating me now, but trust me, you’ll be having fun later. Cheers!”
–Tim
When I worked for a retailer that was owned by a few large commercial breweries, the rule of thumb was the following:
– Bottled beer keeps for three months from the Born On date.
– Canned beer keeps for four months from the Born On date.
Of course, the above applied unless the brewer had put on a Best Before date. In that case, the Best Before date took precedence.
Your mileage may vary, naturally, because of storage conditions in your home. Beer likes to be in a cool place, and it hates light. Beer kept in a warm place and/or exposed to sunlight probably wouldn’t last even three months; beer in a cool dark place might last longer than the rule above states.
I’ve never heard of beers needing aging in the package (bottle, can, or keg). It’s my understanding that the aging process involves letting the living yeast do its work. But the heat pasteurization or cold-filtering, one of which must be performed before the beer can be consumed, are both designed to stop the yeast working (pasteurization kills it, filtering removes it), so no amount of aging after pasteurization or filtering should make a difference.
Depends on the beer, maybe. If you’re sticking with hops, yeast, malt, and water, as most commercial beers do, I doubt it would make any difference. Home brews are a different story. First, they need some time after bottling to carbonate correctly and second if they’re more than just the Reinheitsgebot recipe then the flavors need to blend. Home brew should really sit for at least a couple of months.
And sometimes aging does help. I used to brew and made a lot of beer for parties. One time after a friend’s big annual summer party, one of the special blends (blackberry stout) got left in the back of his refrigerator. Since this refrigerator was in a house shared by four men 
the beer stayed there for two years–no one ever saw it. When they moved, my friend found the beer and gave it back, and let me tell you: if I had the self-discipline and the refrigerator space to let blackberry stout age for two years more often I’d do it.
Mmmmmm… beeer…
Thanks for the info; it sounds as if six months from the bottling date is about the limit. I’ve also found that microbrews and imports can be relatively old, even if the microbrewery is nearby.
The six-month-old microbrew I’ve got now tastes perfectly fine, however when drinking it, I noticed a little bit of grainy sediment at the bottom of the glass. I wonder if this is due to “aging”?
If the beer has been kept upright, it’s probably precipitate (that is, gunk that would be in suspension in your beer if it hadn’t settled out). So yes, it’s sort of due to aging, but only in the sense that it’s settled out of the beer–it’s not mold or anything like that. Ever had homebrew and seen the stuff at the bottom? That’s largely dead yeast picked up in the process of getting the beer from the fermenting tank to the bottles. It won’t hurt you.