I would appreciate any help regarding how long beer can retain it's taste. I understand that the word taste is very subjective but I am trying to determine if I made mistakes. Often I will go to my favorite beer supplier and find myself binge buying in large quantities. Worse, I may purchase more beer before consuming what I have already in stock. I typically store the beer in a dark room that temperature never exceeds 70 degrees. My oldest stock is probably 9-10 months at most. I am going to change this practice. A separate variable is that I recently opened some beer from my stock that had a date of being bottled 2 years ago although I purchased it 9 months ago. In this instance, I rather not say the beer's name or the supplier, but it was not bad per se, but not all that it was cracked up too based on experience and it's high ratings. Can anyone provide me some insight regarding this topic? I would greatly appreciate it. FYI The alcohol content of all my bears are not below 6% if this matters. Thanks in advance.
It's my understanding that beers with high ABV and IBU will keep its flavor profile for a longer time. Beers that feature strong hop flavor will tend to decrease in pungency after a few months. But in the end its all up to your personal preferences. If the beer tastes the same to you after a few months then enjoy it.
Aging beer is a pretty big topic with not a lot of agreement it seems... I think it really depends on style and what you are looking for as far as flavors. There are flavors that fade over time and there are aspects/flavors that get better over time. Hops are the biggest thing that fade, so if these mysterious unnamed beers are of the IPA/DIPA variety, you are *most likely* losing good flavors. That said, most imperial stouts, sours and barlywine styles are all good candidates for aging in my opinion.
Each style of beer described on here has a generic recommendation on the style description page. Look up your beer, click the style link, look on the right hand side of the page. Edit: also in the Beer 101 section you'll find some general information about storing/aging beer.
People cellar because they want to experience what time, temperature and some slight exposure to oxygen, etc., will do to the beer - how the flavors in the fresh beer might blend and change. Typically one does not cellar beer in order to "retain its taste". If you want to preserve fresh beer taste, refrigerate it, and don't buy more beer than you typically consume within the brewers' "best by" dates (many of which are, if anything, too generous). A sample "rule of thumb" used within the industry:
To piggyback into here, I just read elsewhere that aging/storing beer should be done vertically. I had a few bottles places with wines in the wine cellar in the horizontal position. Is that the wrong thing to do?
Ah shit. They're ruined. They're fine. There are a couple theories as to why storing on their side would be bad: sediment buildup on the side of the bottle, beer contact with the cap. But mostly it's conjecture in the internet, you can store a beer on its side for many years and probably will never notice the difference (if you pour carefully).
I fully agree. I'm always very surprised that more people on this site clearly don't use all of its resources. Beer 101 section, among others, is one of the "best" and most educational parts of this site.
