Aging beer in cans?

Last year I cellared 8 cans of Mayflower Russian Imperial Stout. At Christmas about 6 months later I opened a couple. One was OK but one tasted like the can. Between Christmas and New Year we polished off the rest. The other 6 were OK.

My un-scientific conclusion is that if the lining is going to fail it will do so in the first few months. If it lasts past that then it will probably be OK for much longer. How much longer? I got 8 more cans and plan on having one after a year and then one ever 6 months after that. I will tell you how it comes out in about 5 years.

I know this is not a statistically significant sample. But if a bunch of people try the same test with different beers then in 5 years we all should know. Considering how long beer has been brewed, this is a short time.

 

Maybe there's actual research behind this but this is the part that screams bro-science to me. For one thing, just ingesting something doesn't mean your body is going to do anything with it (see: multi-vitamins). But the real red flag to me is the weird masculinity panic -- "Estrogen, what does that do!? That's like a woman thing! Uhh uhhh uhhhhh shit, what's a part of a woman? Boobs? Probably gives you boobs." -- like, calm down, probably just gives you liver cancer or some shit in like twenty years.

Anyway the whole earth is poisoned and we're all gonna die soon. Drink the cans, it's fine.

 

I get where you're coming from with the bro-science thing but unfortunately many industrial chemicals from plasticisers to pesticides are estrogen-like, studies have linked everything from a collapse of male amphibian populations in agricultural areas to earlier and earlier onset of puberty in young girls to this estrogenic saturation. Not sure how it interacts with the contents of the cans it's lining but there is no reason to believe it's healthy and some good reason to be at least a little concerned, especially if you drink a lot of canned beer.

 

What’s “bro-science”?

There is research out there that synthetic estrogen from BPA lined cans can contribute to disruptions in the endocrine system, which is attributed to extra fatty deposits in breast tissue of men- more colloquially known as “moobs”. You can google “BPA endocrine” and look at the research yourself.

Is there research that condradicts this? Yes, this is the modern world, and the internet allows for expressions of many views. This camp believes the BPA releases “estrogen-like” compounds, but because they are synthetic and don’t match up perfectly, conclusive correlation cannot be drawn.

Of course, maybe in my attempt to not speak over your heads about the topic it came off as “bro sciencey”.

 

Yeah don't get me wrong, I worry a lot about this stuff. It's just that the particular straight-line correlation of "I'm drinking lady hormones so I'm going to turn into a lady" strikes me as having a certain resonance with a certain kind of dude when really that's probably the last thing we should be worrying about. I mean it's like the idiots who thought (probably still do) that soy turns you gay. Which, if that's the worst thing that happens to us from consuming 50 pounds of Roundup every year, shit, I'll be happy to turn gayer than the holidays.

 

That reminds me of a friend of mine who has a plan to get round up banned by convincing the evangelical community that it's making their kids gay.

 

Haha that is both funny and very, very sad. People are idiots are rarely fact check, but if you play to their baser instincts you can get them to believe anything. . Trust me, it will be great, huge, beautiful, the best ever. Trust me, it is so great it will solve the problem so we don’t have to worry about a thing.

 

I peed a bit