Too old to safely drink, that is. I had some Rolling Rock beer in bottles in the 'fridge from two years ago that I drank this week. It went down fine but my stomach has been a little funny ever since. The beer was constantly refrigerated over the two years. What’s the shelf life for the stuff?
Google is your friend.
The worst old beer I ever drank was some cans of Schmidt that had lived in an empty cooler in the back of a truck for three months in a Montana summer. The paint was darn near worn off from rolling around in the cooler. But we broke down 10 miles from nowhere on a 100 degree afternoon and had to walk for help across the badlands.
I can’t think of anyway to describe the taste other than “vomitus.” There was nothing to indicate that it had once been beer.
whistlepig, who is currently drinking a fresh ice-cold Kokanee.
Most beer is meant to be consumed fresh and gets worse with age (and faster if not refrigerated), but some beers styles do get better with age. I’ve got about 200 beers in my beer cellar aging right now- Imperial stouts, Barley Wines, Imperial IPAs, Belgian Tripels and Quads and a few other styles. Most of them reach there peak at about two to three years but will stay mighty tasty and sometimes get even better after ten.
That funny feeling might be in your head. Two years refrigerated? Not really a problem. If it doesn’t smell/taste skunky yet, it hasn’t gone bad.
Keep a quality Pilsner, Oktoberfest, hell, even a Budweiser in the fridge for two years and compare it to a fresh one. It ain’t gonna be the same but it won’t be skunky. I’ve never had a beer get skunky on me just from being old; it had to be light affected.
Mmmmmm…takes me back to my first few days in Vietnam, drinking Ballantine in rusty steel cans that had been sitting on pallets in the sun for months and months. The stuff would make your throat constrict when you tried to swallow, and it didn’t get any better the more you drank.
Higher gravity brews can get better with age. That is, those that have a high malt content usually accompanied with corresponding bitterness. But not if they’re bruised by light and heat, which rules out green bottles.
Canned lawnmower beer will keep a long time if kept cold. Early completion of a job got me a bonus of thirty cases of the “King” of beers, which I don’t drink normally. It got served at parties and B.S. sessions with nary a comment over a couple years.