Newbie Question About "Create Your Own" 6-packs

I don't know any technical reasons why, but I'm going to say there is no problem whatsoever and enjoy your beer!

 

Refrigeration is rarely the issue with the create a sixer. I've had plenty of great beer go from refrgerator to room temp and back and they still taste amazing. I also used them to develop my love of craft beer, and it scared me off of IPA. The reason is that most places use them to get rid of older beers and ipas lose flavor after months on the shelf. A place near me just started the make your own six pack and I looked ta the dates and all of the IPAs are over 4 months.

Tldr; temp is fine, check dates on IPAs

Cheers and welcome to the craft beer world,
Tikk

 

I know the general idea is that hop focused beers are best when kept cold from start to finish, but that is hardly ever the case. From bottling line to delivery truck, truck to back room, back room to shelf, at some point or another, that beer that is best kept cold probably spent some time sitting idle and non-refrigerated.

As @tikk mentioned, temperature is probably not going to be much of an issue when selecting your next possible favorite brew, but dates are more your enemy. The fresher the better, generally, and is usually the biggest deciding factor for me and most others.

We're a beer-**** loving crowd here, don't hesitate to let us know once you pull the trigger what you've found and loved, hated, to preach about or want further advice on!

 

Warm is ok just chill it for your imbibing pleasure. As a side note I was at fresh market and they had dogfish head 60 minute IPA cold for 11.99 a sixer. They also had cold rows of brew for a 9.99 create your own sixer. One row of beers for create your own sixer was dogfish head 60 minute. Cha Ching!!!!!!

 

No, bottle conditioning is the act of leaving yeast in the bottle for either carbonation or secondary fermentation reasons. Sterile filtration is a way to take out any particulates or floaties in your beer.

 

If there's sediment in the bottle, it was likely bottle-conditioned. In line with any basic home-brewing procedure, the beer is mixed with a sugar slurry to kick-start some of the yeast still alive in the batch and then immediately packaged. This added step will help carbonate the beer; make a better seal on the container; and get rid of head-space oxygen. Minor filtration can be used to remove solids from the beer if need be, but I doubt it is used extensively once the wort has been fermented into beer.

In sterile filtration, the beer is a finished product before undergoing filtration through sterile filters. This removes yeast and essentially makes beer sterile (so long as the fillers are cleaned properly). Oftentimes you'll see beer packaged in a "clean room" at breweries utilizing this technique in order to avoid any sort of unintentional microbial contamination. Bottle-conditioned beers rarely undergo such extensive filtration as they utilize the yeast in the finishing process.

With either technique, storing the beer warm does not pose a problem (so long as they were done right). Yeast in most bottle-conditioned beers will die off before it hits the market, so storing it warm will have no impact on its growth. Sterile-filtered beer typically has no/minimal microbe activity in it for months, so again, storing warm is not an issue.

Skunking wouldn't result from improper filtration/conditioning, but rather occurs when beer is exposed to UV light (exposure is not really limited to any amount of time). Coors Banquet was unpasteurized and unfiltered (I doubt they would have bothered with bottle-conditioning), so leaving it un-refrigerated would have caused spoilage. I believe that since the early 90's they have used sterile-filtration on Coors Banquet in order to widen distribution. Almost all beer undergoes one of the three main treatments (pasteurization, sterile-filtration, bottle-conditioning) before hitting the bottle/can/keg/pouch these days.

 

Ditto. I have been lucky enough to do the same with 90 minute on a couple occasions. This is why I always check the create your own area to see if there is anything different.

 

During this time of year, I wouldn't worry about beer sitting at room temperature. Instead, I would focus on the freshness/born on dates of the beers purchased. For nearly any beer, freshness is king.

 

Coors was one of the primary developers of the "microfiltered/sterile fill" method (aka "real draft in a can/bottle") as an alternative to traditional tunnel pasteurization back in the late 1950s - concurrent with their work on the 2-piece aluminum beer can (necessary for the former process).

Here's how Coors themselves explained it in a late 1970s promotional booklet "A Handful of Questions about Coors":

and:

Coors filters being installed, circa 1980, from company publication The Adolph Coors Story:

​

 

keep your eye on the dates.

 

Shhhh-don't tell them

 

The "create your own 6" has also helped me in this new/vast game of craft beer. Before discovering the "create your own," I'd buy a regular 6 pack - if I liked it, great. If not, the rest of the pack went to waste or I'd take it to a party/picnic and pass it off to someone else. Anyway, I just recently realized that you have to be careful with the date. Since recently finding a bottle with a "bottled" date of almost 6 months ago, I now check every bottle before putting it in my pack.

 

Easy fix : mix a 6 of stouts. Better at room temperature

 

1. Buying warm is no problem. Temperature changes are [almost] not a problem unless you're dealing with constant swings over years (like when aging beer)
2. Checking dates on beers should become almost a reflex. It'll help you always find fresh hoppy beers, and sometimes you'll find a pre-aged stout too!

That's why every place I've ever seen has a "no more than 2 of the same beer" rule on their mix-a-six sections...but if yours doesn't, by all means take advantage!

 

Hang on. Are you telling me that Indiana allows beer to be sold at supermarkets, but only if it is unrefrigerated? I've read some funny laws from other states on these threads before, but this one might take the cake. As long as the cake is unrefrigerated as well.

 

It's probably some logic that if it not cold you can't drink it right away so you need to take it home a put it in the fridge so now you are at home. It is indeed bizarre.

 

Even funnier though Andrew is the banning of Happy Hour, only one state in the whole United States has done that! How can Happy Hour be "banned"?