I have quite a little collection of large size bottles of various alcohol.
Booze left over from my wedding and that was 8 years ago.
They’ve been sitting in the garage that gets hot in the summer and cold in the winter.
Almost all of them have been opened. Should I be pouring the stuff down the drain or does liquor stay good even if a bottle has been opened and exposed to serious heat for months on end?
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You ever heard of vinegar? It isn’t only wine and cider that can make it; those two sources just happen to be relatively cheap and produce results that are commercially viable.
Depending on the type of liquor and how it’s been kept, it will have gone bad. Or not. Won’t know until you check. It’s got to do not just with the temperatures but also with whether the right bacteria ever got in. We just can’t tell from this side of the screen.
I can say from experience that gin, vodka, and scotch are perfectly fine if kept well sealed and within reasonable temperatures. Wine, however, is another matter. Perhaps that’s because it is very hard to properly reseal a decanted bottle of wine.
Almost all of it will be fine. Throw out anything with cream in it like Bailey’s. All the spirits will be okay. If you have some sweet stuff with low alcohol, like under 20% or so, that might be iffY, but I’m not sure. That I would just taste. Your straight spirits are good.
In general, high proof alcohol does not change in the bottle. It will stay good through a wide range of temperatures and storage conditions. Cream liquors like Bailey’s are an obvious exception. Wine will go bad if stored improperly or if it wasn’t made to be aged (this is true of most mass market wines).
They’re highly unlikely to go bad in a dangerous way but they may oxidize and flavors may go off. I suggest you inventory the bottles, discard anything that hasn’t been opened in 5+ years. Sniff/sample the rest to check if they’re still palatable. If they are, move them into convenient dark, coolish storage that’s more available to you in your daily activities. Hidden in the garage it’s “out of sight, out of mind”. If you’re not going to consume them then what’s the point in keeping them around?
Well, it’s not so much that as the amount of fermentables it still contains and its relatively low alcohol content. Acetobacter, for instance, (that’s the genus of bacteria that makes vinegar), only tolerates up to about a 15-20% alcohol environment (usually, for making vinegar, you keep it down to 7%-8% for a vigorous and sustainable conversion of ethanol into acetic acid. If you look at articles for homemade vinegar, they will often ask you to water down your wine for this reason.) Plus you have all sorts of other stuff other than ethanol and water in fermented products like beer or wine that are susceptible to secondary fermentations with the right/wrong bacteria or yeast, which you don’t have in distilled spirits. In liqueurs, though, you do have a lot of sugar, which is eminently fermentable, but a high enough alcohol concentration will keep that from happening. Looking online, it doesn’t even seem like sweeter liqueurs like triple sec have a problem years after opening, but I drew the line at 20% just in case.
Wait, are you saying discarding anything unopened for 5+ years? There’s certainly almost zero probability of it being a problem unless its a cream liquor. I don’t even think it will taste much off, if at all. If its been opened, yes, there is the possibility some oxidation has affected its flavor (especially with something like whiskey), but it’s still probably fine. I’ve certainly drunk clear liquors 20+ years old and long opened that tasted perfectly fine to me. And as for unopened whiskey, I’ve bought and saved bottles with the intention of drinking them many years nigh without an issue. Last one was a bottle of Scotch I bought in 1996 that I finally drank in 2011 (at my wedding.) It, of course, didn’t age at all in the bottle, but was perfectly delicious when opened 15 years nigh. With opened bottles of whiskey, I don’t usually let them go beyond three-ish years before finishing the bottle (don’t worry–I finish cheaper bottles of whiskey much, much, much faster than that), but even at three years, I’ve not noticed significant taste deterioration.
My apologies, I should have phrased that better. My intent was to indicate that if a bottle has been previously opened but then not touched for more than five years then it can probably be discarded. This has relatively little to do with any possible deterioration of the contents. It has far more to do with the fact that the bottle and it’s contents don’t seem to have any value to the OP. If it was any good at the start, if the OP liked and enjoyed it, then it would have been consumed. The fact that it hasn’t been touched for years probably means that it has no value to the OP and can be discarded or given away at no loss to the OP. (IMHO of course)
Ah, makes sense!
Still a big assumption.
I have many bottles of old single-malts, several of which are more than 5 years old, and I love them all. I just drink them rarely. Literally, a single dram every a couple of months, because I have to be in the mood.
Dump them. Life’s too short to drink compromised booze. If the bottles are more than 50% depleted, you start running into serious oxidation problems which can negatively impact flavor. You obviously (as stated above) don’t value any of the spirits, so down the drain they should go.
gnoitall - Most booze writers and distillers recommend killing a bottle of single malt once it gets down to 30% or so, for the above reasons. You might be in need of throwing a party or two.
The OP asked for opinions, I offered one. What he does with it is his choice.
To me, that would be all the more reason to keep them. If I, a steady a drinker as I know, don’t really care or even notice the taste difference after three or four years of my beloved scotches, why would a non-drinker care? That bottle is just as good as a new one. Just keep it for your mixed drinks or whatnot. Or, hell, I’ll take 'em!
I can kind of agree with both of the basic responses here - one of them is more like facts and the other is more like advice - hard liquor, with the stated exceptions, doesn’t really go bad, but if it’s been 8 years already and you didn’t give it a serious thought till yesterday, are you really going to drink any of it.
If the seal isn’t perfect, the booze might be a little lower proof because the alcohol will evaporate more readily than water. This is especially true if it has gone through regular temperature changes - each time it gets hot, a little more ethanol vapor will be escaping through any tiny leak.
But this isn’t a risk to health. The alcohol level in spirits is too high for any bacteria to turn it to vinegar or anything nastier. Go ahead and taste it - large-size bottles from a wedding probably weren’t the highest quality booze to start with, so any degradation from evaporation probably isn’t too noticeable.
I’m guessing that after 8 years sitting in your unclimatized garage, you’re never going to drink it, so I’d give it away or throw it away, if I were you. Unless you are a hoarder, then by all means, hang on to it.
Hi. Thanks to all for the information !
To clarify: Every single bottle has been opened. Some barely touched, others at 50% drained or more. The one unopened is a Kaluha Mudslide mix. Out it goes- too much cream.
The booze means nothing to me. I only drink tequila. That said because I cannot TELL if any of them are off.
I suppose I could ask around and see who drinks what in my circle, and gift them opened bottles with the caveat that they may be great, they may be undrinkable. The enormous bottle of SKY Vodka is barely touched, for example. May make someone very happy…
The SKYY is probably the one bottle that hasn’t had much degradation. Gift it to a friend. It will still make a decent vodka for mixing.
I had an opened bottle of Amaretto forgotten for a loooong while in the back of the cupboard; it was really thick and disgustingly sweet (just tasted it). Tossed.