Weird little question, but might be a familiar problem to people who've attended these higher-tier tastings. If you want to keep a pour of a really special beer fresh and preferrably carbonated for someone, what's the best way to go about it? Is there a way to keep some okay flavor in there, or will the beer just oxidize to hell in a matter of days once it comes into contact with air?
Not sure if this is relevant, I've left stouts in a glass out overnight a couple times. They tasted fine the next day, albeit flat.
Depends if your shipping or not but couldn't you simply use a wine seal pump and leave it in the bottle and suck the oxygen out?
You lose the carbonation in the beer if you do that. If its a style that depends less on carbonation than most, like stouts, I would probably just put a wine stopper in there and tell that guy to come over in the next few days. It'll taste fine, I promise.
Done and done: http://www.amazon.com/Beer-Saver-Re...=1377368510&sr=8-1&keywords=silicone+beer+cap I use them, they work great. I even started by testing them with a Bigfoot (didn't want to experiment on something I didn't have plenty of). Opened it, poured half the bottle into my FiftyFifty snifter (I think it holds 8 oz maybe 10, it's small) and put one of those babys on the bottle and put the bottle back in the fridge. Next day, approx 12 hours later I pulled out said bottle, and flipped the cap off to here a "PSH" sound. Poured it and still got a decent head. Mind you it had lost some but for 12 hours with just that on there, they'd work perfect for tastings. I use them at mine, we tend to open one beer, put a cap on, open another and by the time we get through em all we then just let it be a free for all on what we already tried.
I use to ponder this as well. Bottom line, despite the macho image beer tends to be a much more fragile liquid compared to wine. While a big tannic wine really will need time to unwind in the glass or decanter, its a race against the clock once a beer is open to the elements. And in my experience there's not much you can do about it.
Some interesting discussion on keeping a growler fresh on this thread:http://beeradvocate.com/community/threads/growler-saver-vs-tapit-cap-thoughts.84802/ Cheers!
