Beer Freshness question

I heard this repeated a lot, and for the most part its accurate. But with the prevalence of adjuncts and post fermentation ingredient additions can you really be so certain? If you throw some rat poison in your beer pre-packaging I'm not sure the beer environment would neutralize it. Unfortunately, no one enforces the Reinheisgebot -- that would keep my mind at ease.

 

Well, other than the fact that rat poison is not a human pathogen (i.e., a living micro-organism that can make you ill, and neither is congealed protein) there is no prevention measure in place that would totally prevent someone from throwing in a poison before bottling nor, as you say, would the environment neutralize the poison. That exact problem is why when the Patriot Act was passed some years back there was a general requirement for food and beverage items that the origin of a product and its ingredients had to be traceable in some way back to its source or point of origin.

While I don't see it on all beer containers you'll notice that many with date stamps also may indicate the time of bottling and a code for which bottling line was in use if the brewery has more than one. (With limited releases some use only a batch code.)

So if someone chose to put rat poison in your beer you'd at least have the consolation of knowing that they probably would eventually be caught.

 

Depends on how well it was made, in my experience. I bought a Knee Deep Breaking Bud about a month ago, its bottling date was 11/26/15. Still tasted pretty damn good, but definitely not as vibrant as it would've been.

 

What if a meteorite strikes you while you are drinking? What if an earthquake happens? Beer on its own cannot contain pathogens but there are possibilities that can happen from which there is no protection, including a murderer adding poison, meteorites, and earthquakes.

 

Earthquakes don't affect beer drinking. Clearly you're not a Californian.

 

So I sourced another store for Bridge's Bourbon Blood Orange Wheat Ale and I inspected the bottles thoroughly, and the were clear and free of any floating debris. So I'm fairly certain that the one I had was either exposed to something or like drtth mentioned it could have been congealed protein. In either case, I'm happy I returned the bottle and also showed the folks there the difference between what they had on the shelf and the one I bought elsewhere.

 

They can cause you to spill some, or so I'm informed.