I found a 12 pack of Spaten Pils in my beer room last week, put it in the fridge and we started drinking it this weekend. My beer room gets to around 80F in the summer, 35F in the winter, and this beer has been there since last September, but it still tastes great. This isn't a high ABV, high, IBU beer, it's just standard everyday beer but it held up very well. Makes me wonder if all the hype about German beer not holding up well is just hype.
Torpedo with about 2, 2.5 months on it sometimes seems to blend into the perfect balance of hops and malt for me.
I had a 10 year old JW Lees Harvest recently, one of the best beers of my entire life. So to answer your question, sometimes.
It's a side room in the garage, mostly I use it to store my glasses, steins, grains and lab equipment, but in the fall and winter I also store beer in there. I have a kegerator and a beer fridge for most of my beer. BTW in the summer my garage is usually around 110F, in the winter it's low 30's to mid 20's so the room is kind of a middle ground.
A buddy of mine down here had a keg of barleywine in his garage(not even in a side room) for 2 years, entered some of it in a competition and ended up with a job as a pro brewer.
You just made me feel very fortunate that my garage (also my "beer room") ranges from 50F in the winter to 65F in the summer. Love the moderate climate here. And to answer your question: No. But generally with most beers, the fresher the better.
I have enjoyed many "old" beers that were past their best by dates and I would say a majority of them are still perfectly fine.
Not always. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1536396/Beautiful-beer-lost-in-the-vaults-since-1869.html http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f14/tasting-notes-137-year-old-beer-294690/
Spaten is pasteurized, likely filtered too, so i would expect it holds up a bit better than many craft pils. unfortunately, alot of the German pils that make it onto our shelves have had some of the life cooked out of them before they even have a chance to shine. one more reason you can use to conveince the wife you need to go to Bavaria. Cheers.
We'v We've been a couple of times already, but now that her parents are both dead and her siblings in France are fighting over the meager inheritance we can now spend our vacation time in Belgium and Germany without having to travel to France first.
Always bad? No. Case in point: I grabbed a crap-load of Hacker-Pschorr Dunkle Weisse about 18 months ago. It was a few months before its bb-date, but was priced at around 10 bucks a case. Hard to say "NO" to a 75% discount on a beer that is a very good brew. I picked up 5-6 cases. I still have a few sixers laying around and they are drinking nicely. No....not as good as fresh....but more than adequate....and certainly better than any BMC junk.
I certainly wouldn't drink that one, nor would I even want to taste it to see what it's like. However, to respond to the OP's question, I have at least one beer in my basement that is over 10 years old, and it's been sitting in a dark corner just at basement temps (60-65). It's a 1999 barleywine that I'm looking forward to drinking someday soon, but I could let it sit 5 more years without any concern if I had that much patience.
