Just over a year ago, my wife and I bought two cases of Tsingtao beer which we intended to give to her brother around April/May 2020 timeframe. The pandemic interrupted our plans so we now have two cases of beer which neither of us drink (since we don’t consume alcohol). The production date is November 6, 2020, and the blurb on the package says the shelf life is 365 days from date of production.
Is this item still drinkable? Or should we donate it to the local imbibers in our neighborhood?
It should be fine, but a lot will depend on how it was stored. If it was left in a garage or other non-climate controlled storage, it may well have gone bad. Particularly if you live in a hot climate.
It’s been in one bedroom in my apartment in Beijing for the last eleven months. The radiator doesn’t work very well and that bedroom is essentially a storage room. The room doesn’t get hot in the summer, but it does get cold in the winter.
You don’t say what the beer is in, bottles or cans. In Canada, I only ever seen Tsingtao in green bottles. If that’s the case, unless your room is completely dark, I’d be surprised if it’s still smells & tastes good (although I don’t think it will make anyone sick).
Beer’s kryptonite is light. It degrades quickly when exposed to any light over any period of time and it develops a “skunky” smell & taste. That’s why most beer is in brown bottles.
I wasn’t aware of this until a few years ago when a friend and I went to a beer tasting. One of the things the guy said was that a lot of people think of Heineken as having a slightly skunky aroma and taste. He said that’s not the Heineken, it’s improperly stored Heineken that’s actually gone skunky.
If you google “beer bottle colour”, there’s lots of info on this.
Why can’t you just take a sip from one to find out? It’ll just taste gross, it won’t do anything. If it’s bad, toss the rest, if not then they’re fine.
E_0_D has it right: taste and decide. That the beer may be slightly past its prime is plausible; the notion that it’s undrinkable / dangerous is seriously far-fetched.
Couldn’t a nondrinker, especially someone who hasn’t cultivated the taste for beer, think it’s bad beer even if was unspoiled? I mean, how would @Monty know what good beer tastes like if he doesn’t drink it?
Agree with the others that, even if bad, it’s not going to kill you. (Unless you drink too much of it, and stumble in front of a train.)
Ah you know, I didn’t catch that Monty doesn’t drink at all. The question “Is it still drinkable or should we donate it?” seems odd if he is not going to keep it to drink in any case.
For us it’s a religious thing and it’s been almost 20 years since I last tasted beer anyway. I wouldn’t likely remember if that’s the right taste. The beer are two casesis canned: two cases minus one can. My wife opened a can to see if it still had fizz.
My initial research showed, as mentiond in the OP, that the shelf life was 365 days. That pretty much rules out waiting until we can go to Korea again to gift the stuff to the original intended recipient.
My query about donation was poorly worded. If it’s still drinkable but only for a few weeks more, my guess was that it’d be better to to donate it. As it’s a liquid item, I cannot ship it out of the country by any of the shipping services or the postal service.
I used to own a ‘65 Chevy PU. Somehow a Coors Light ended up in the glove box. It rattled around in there for about a year and a half until finally almost all of the paint wore off the can. When asked about it, I jokingly called it my spare.
One day a friend declared an emergency and popped the top and drank it down. He claimed it was ok and he didn’t get sick.
Can confirm! I’ve had Heineken in the Netherlands, and Corona in Puerto Vallarta where there’s a Grupo Modelo brewery, and neither was skunky in the least bit. In fact, they were both surprisingly pleasant when that fresh.
What I’ve noticed with beer is that over time, malt flavors tend to dissipate, and hop bitterness becomes more sharp. I tested this by having Pilsner Urquell in Prague (very near Pilsen), Vienna, Budapest, London and Dallas. At each step, it was less malty and more sharply bitter. I’d actually noticed it some years prior on my study-abroad, when some brands of British beer were more sharply bitter in the US than they were in the UK, even when having the canned version in the UK. Same thing sort of happens in the US with some craft brews- if you get them near where they’re brewed, they tend to be extremely fresh, but if you’re getting them somewhere else, it’s likely they sat in a warehouse for a month, then on store shelves for a few weeks, etc… before you bought them. But not quite as long as a beer that’s brewed on a different continent- it likely sat in a warehouse there for a while before being shipped, then in another one here, and then in the store, etc…
I’d guess your beer is fine though; Tsingtao isn’t particularly malty or hoppy, so its flavor profile isn’t going to be as strongly affected as other beers’ flavors. Light is the enemy here, and in particular sunlight and fluorescent lights. They do something to hop alpha-acid molecules and cause them to produce skunky-smelling compounds. Dark bottles tend to reduce that a lot, but green/clear don’t seem to be very effective at preventing it at all.
They’re brewed specifically for long-term aging. Bought a 4-pack on a lark for $12.00 just to see if the aging was for real.
I tried the first bottle in 1991. It was pretty smooth, and very good. In '96, I tried the second, with some expectation it would be a little better. When I tried it, was definitely better this time round and much smoother. I shared it with others and they were very impressed.
Forgot about the bottles till I found them in my closet about five years ago. Along with a bottle of Samichlaus beer from 1993 (BTW, 16% AV–it’s not chugging).
Just looking at various online prices for it, the '91 TH runs between $60 to $80 per bottle. I see another TH collection (1968 till 2018) offered online for $4000.
It’ll just taste gross, it won’t do anything. If it’s bad, toss the rest, if not then they’re fine.