Beer freshness depending on style

I never made a big deal about the dates but recently I purchased an Imperial Biscotti Break that tasted horrid. After further examination it was from May 2015. Sitting on a shelf by the window did not treat it kindly, but I do put in a little more effort to check on some of dates for pricier stuff.

There's an interesting interview with John Kimmich (The Alchemist) from Chop & Brew on youtube where John talks about the flavor of Heady Topper evolving everyday it sits in the can. He mentions when you get a case of Heady if you tried one everyday you would notice how the flavor changes as time goes on and not necessarily for the worse. When I got my case of Heady I didn't try this experiment but I would say the cans I had that were close to a month old were more flavorful than the fresh ones, but I've noticed the opposite with Tree House hops. The longer they sit the more flavors fade, kind of weird they acted oppositely but just my personal experience.

 

The one problem with the amazing "new england" style and/or "north east" IPA's is that they're basically drain pours anything over than one month

 

If only the Alchemist dated their cans!

 

This graph gets tossed around a lot, and I think it's misleading for a couple reasons:

1. It was developed using light lager beers exclusively.
2. It was developed using beers with extremely high amounts (by today's standards) of process dissolved oxygen and bottle packaged oxygen. Beers in the 70's had anywhere from ten times to a hundred times more oxygen exposure than they do now.

Because of #1, it's not really relevant to 99% of the beers being discussed in this forum. Because of #2, the graph is straight up wrong about the staling process in beers made on modern equipment.

The staling process is a balance of pro-oxidants and anti-oxidants. In light lagers, the anti-oxidants are in rather limited supply. The primary anti-oxidants in beer are hop acids, polyphenols (tannic acids and quercetins from both the malt and hops), and SO2 from yeast metabolism. The primary oxidant is a hydroxyl radical that can be generated in a multitude of ways (Fe2+ is a major contributor to OH* generation). As long as you can quench the radicals as soon as they are generated, the staling process is very very slow. Once you "use up" your supply of anti-oxidants (by attaching a radical to all of your free polyphenols and hop acids, for instance), the staling process takes off and is exponential faster as temperature increases.

Thinking about the beers we care about, the things that happen the soonest are hop aroma depletion and malt toffee appearance. We don't really see cardboard anymore. Ribes can occur in fresh hoppy beers using certain hop varieties, but I've never seen it appear during an extended staling study. Toffee/caramel development happens, but it takes about 2-3 times as long as that graph indicates in modern beer.

Since radical generation and oxidation from said radical both occur dramatically faster as temperature increases, the single best thing you can do for beer is keep it extremely cold throughout its life once it's done fermenting, regardless of style.

The second best thing you can do is give it a lot of anti-oxidant headroom with your raw ingredients - all malt, lots of hop acids, and live yeast all contribute to longevity. With that in mind there is certainly a style component to freshness simply because of the IBU differences and differences in yeast.

It's my personal opinion though, unless a beer is packaged with live yeast, it's folly to cellar/age it. Beer is a perishable food, and is unequivocally better when drank as soon as possible. I wouldn't buy a beer over three months old (though I may drink one).

 

Agreed. The macro lagers and ales are best drunk within 6 months, but most bottled aged beers go well beyond that. It also depends on style. And no there is not a cut and dry rule, BUT in general larger ABV beers age better. There are exceptions (see Molson XXX). I aged Sassions, Barleywine, and DIPA/IIPAs without issue. Some people do age IPAs (remember they were meant to be shipped around the world back in the day) but most need to be drunk fresh. Most beers that can be aged explicitly say so and have a "drink by date". When in doubt-- ask your local beer guru when you buy it. Most will point you in the right direction. And be sure to check the forums. There's tons of posts on aging and recommendations on how to wade the waters here.

The Cellaring/Aging section of these forums are gold:

http://www.beeradvocate.com/community/forums/cellaring-aging-beer.41/

Check it out and when in doubt-- reach out to the community and interact

 

Peter, are you aware of Brewtan B and/or Polyclar Brewbrite? How effective are these products at extending shelf-life?

Cheers!

Jack

 

Good point, you might have to consider the effects of autolysis if the yeast remains in contact with the beer for a long time. Not sure about that case.

 

IIRC, while Dalgliesh created the graph in the 1977, it was the Brewers Association which only in recent years added the simplistic timeline in months on the bottom (thus the "Adapted from..." line).

I think the graph (without the timeline) is still useful when a good portion of the current beer geekery believes that the only characteristic of old beer is the loss of hop bitterness/aroma and thus only hoppy beers need to be bought and consumed fresh, which also results in comments about such beers being "malty messes ", which is not a standard beer "malt flavor" but the defect of "sweet taste & toffee-like aroma and flavor" that Dalgliesh describes.