The science behind beer degradation

that hasn't stopped 1000s of breweries here from starting up....

 

surprisingly few. don't you read the posts about "the more the merrier" and "it's all good"?

 

Damnit, beat me to it!

I know you put a winky face, but I was going to reply with the same thing, only seriously. MANY of them appear to still be thriving...but get back to me in like 10 years.

 

Over super bowl weekend found a stone ruination 2.0 at a friends house...back of the fridge. Was dated best by 1-xx-2019. I was curious and about 4 beers deep so I gave it a whirl. Was still still good. Didn’t have a fresh 2.0 to compare it with. But tasted like a west coast ipa should

 

You people all need to rethink your drinking.

 

Either drinkers in Germany drink everything really fresh so beer doesn't sit on shelves or they don't notice / care. For someone to tell breweries that have been in business for 10s if not 100s of years that they are doing it wrong because science says so is actually quite amusing. Drinker knows better than brewer would surely have put these breweries out of business years ago.

Try doing a blind vertical of 4 beers with 3 months between them and see if the difference is really that noticable. If it is then you have your benchmark.

If you have never had a beer before, you are always judging it on its age and it not being fresh enough without knowing if it is good or bad. For me life is too short to get hung up on it. If it tastes good, it is good. If it isn't, give it a second go then move on.

Everything is subjective as the beer scores show.

Now I better go and throw out that 2014 bottle of courage imperial stout as it is going to kill me!

 

Commercial considerations can override quality considerations, as is evident by the use of green bottles by many breweries. It's not that breweries are unaware of the issues of skunking or staling, they simply have to, or choose to, adapt themselves to the market.

 

Who would flame you, I’d be surprised if there wasn’t 100% agreement with you here. The best by dates are imo arbitrary and inconsistent, they vary by brewer within the same style if beer. And who knows this without googling it first? I suspect anyone dating their beer over a year out as still within limits are strictly looking at the financials. Imo even 12 months is depressingly optimistic and well outside of my buying date. If it’s over 4 months old no thanks, and then there’s storage conditions, perhaps not as critical in the winter vs storing beer in warm warehouses in the summer heat and humidity. I mean Jever dating their beers 15 months out is a joke, and at that I can’t find one in code, when I’ve checked dates they are over and should have been pulled from the shelf. Date the damn cans, don’t over buy, and store them properly, beers a perishable product.

 

Beer doesn't perish, it degrades. Out of date beer won't kill you.

 

Oxidation, Oxidation, Oxidation. No matter what the scientific study, I would want to know what was done to control oxidation.

In my brewery, we do sooooo many things to keep our DO (dissolved oxygen) exceptionally low. DO is a HUGE factor in how beer ages.

Here are some of the variables in the process to consider:

How is a person dry hopping? Active fermentation, hop cannon, hop doser that's purged with CO2, after a soft crash, etc... All will have different impacts on DO pickup (or minimization of DO pickup).

Is the beer transferred to a brite tank before packaging (every transfer = more DO pickup)? Or is the beer packaged from a Unitank (a fermentor which is also crashed and carbed)?

Lots of variables the lend to the DO headed to packaging. Going to the canning line we're below 10 ppm (typically even below 5 ppm) as measured by an Anton Paar. This is well below "acceptable" DO levels of 50 ppm. Then we have processes to prep a hose to the filling line to minimize DO, and super tight control of carb levels and temperature, so you get good repeatability filling, which means your gonna be able to minimize DO pickup at the canner (the largest source of DO pickup, assuming you did everything right in your process leading up to packaging), plus a canner known for minimum DO pickup, which equates into a very low TPO.

A customer of mine saves one beer from my rotating double IPA releases; we did a sensory of about 8 to 10 months of releases. I was utterly floored at how well my hazy juicy double IPAs held up. The fresh hop taste (grassy, spicy, floral) was obviously gone on the older beers (as one would expect), but there wasn't issues with malty, oxidized flavors. The juicy flavors were great...just not as "sharp" as a freshie.

So long story short.

1) Any study would need to control DO, and compare that variable over time before you can make an assumption about older beer = bad beer.
2) Regarding "older" NEIPA, assuming low TPO (and hence long shelf life), if the biggest change is the "older" beer is more heavy on juice flavors vs the fresher, sharper notes (slighly piney, herbal), that necessarily isn't a bad thing...it really starts to play into a persons flavor preferences.

As a brewer, of course I always want fresh beer, don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating for drinking old beer. Just pointing out that there are many layers to the story, one brewery's poor packaging practices shouldn't be reflected on the group as a whole.

Regards,

Kurt Borchardt
Owner/Brewer
Artisanal Brew Works

 

But then I always think, "Man if it's this good when it's this old, how good is it when fresh?"

No it won't.

But if you pay $20 for a 4 pack of a New England IPA and you find out it's two months old and is literally falling apart and tastes off...it won't kill you, but you sure as shit aren't going to be happy.

 

Perishable and degrades are about the same thing, semantics, they don’t last in optimal condition forever, and they’re made for the most part to drink fresh. No one mentioned it turning to trash at any certain date, it’s just not as the brewery buyer intended, of course it’s still drinkable. But... at $12 a six pack, I’m picky about what I buy, and certain styles fall off very quickly. I generally won’t buy Lagers over 4 months old, and for big IPAs probably 6 weeks, are it still good at 2-3 months ? I’m sure they are, but there’s a difference between still good and peak. Besides there’s local options that allow me to do so.

 

for every german everywhere? that's quite the declaration.

also not sure about your extrapolations from the best-by dates. are americans eating old corn flakes because the package says they're good for 5 years?

EDIT: as has been mentioned throughout this thread, big breweries (whose beers comprise the large majority of the ones sold at supermarkets and getraenkemaerkte) utilize methods, ingredients, and equipment that indurate spoiling (sterile filtration, hop extracts than can prevent skunking, low dissolved oxygen packaging). just think you're generalizing here

 

Great info.
Cheers

 

I agree with your statements, but it should be ppb, not ppm. An easy mistake I've made in the past.

 

An easy mistake to make but a HUGE difference in amount.

It would be like mixing up grams and kilograms.

 

A two month old beer that's in that bad of shape isn't a dating problem, it's a brewing and/or packaging problem.