I've just discovered a couple of cans in the bottom of the cupboard - both nearly a year after their "Best Before" date. One is a can of malt extract, the other is a wheat beer kit.
Does anyone know if I should just chuck these out, or are they still likely to be able to make drinkable beer?
Any suggestions appreciated
Cheers Robert
I had several cans that were outdated quite a bit. I used them and wished that I hadn't ~ it produced some awful tasting stuff that I just dumped. As a matter of fact, one of the cans that I opened smelled and looked so bad that I sent it down the tubes.
To the best of my knowledge ( which I do admit is not that much) the best before usually refers to the yeast in the package. I have used some expired cans before - using fresh yeast instead of the original one and the beer came out pretty good.
Hippocampus
"Who Dares W> Thanks, that's good to know. I'll have to be a bit more careful in > future :-(
I recently tried to brew an old kit, with a best before date over 4 years old. I decided to try brewing it - if nothing else I might learn something. The kit never fermented out to anything close to what it was supposed to - I think the target FG was 1.008 but it stopped at 1.024 or so. (Initial gravity was where it was supposed to be.) Fermentation was never vigorous, but it wasn't dead, either.
Figuring the yast might be too old, I bought a fresh batch of champange yeast (figuring it might do better in the presence of some alcohol), rehydrated it, fed it some sugar water to hopefully get the population up, dropped in some yeast nutrient to boot. Fermentation activity in the starter water was very good. I then pitched that into the wort/beer. Fermentation restarted and the gravity dropped but it eventually quit at 1.018. The "beer" tasted a little odd... not infected or anything... just a harsh sharp taste which I think some would attribute to oxidation. (Not having tasted a known oxidized sample, I have no reference to know for sure.) I didn't think this batch would improve much with time and bottle conditioning, so I tossed the batch. (I wasn't really interested in bottling everything then having to dump it all.)
Subsequent to this event, I have read that some believe that the extract can oxidize in the can over time. I tend to believe this to be the case, given my experience. I do believe the beer would have been "drinkable" in the sense that the beer wasn't bad and wouldn't harm you, but it wouldn't be an enjoyable beer. YMMV.
Steve
On Sat, 22 Jan 2005 13:58:02 +1300, Robert Fraser said in alt.beer.home-brewing:
Depends on your taste buds. Some people consider Corona in clear bottles, or Budweiser, "drinkable beer".
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