Shelf life

Standard beer may have quite a short shelf life, however some is brewed specially to have a long shelf life, IPA is a good example made so it could be taken to India by sailing ships and still be OK when it arrived 6 months or more latter, so this should last in an unopened keg for at least a year.

Lager should last even longer, the whole idea of the French process was it would last longer than more traditional methods so should last longer than IPA.

Again the higher the ABV the longer it will last.

So bought three beers from Lidi, all with best by date of around a year, one a bitter at 3.6 ABV% one a lager 4% ABV the the last a PILS 4.5% ABV this does not seem to make sense.

Even my kit home brew which should be the worst beer to keep since using tap water, keeps for a year often two years before I drink it, so why such a short self life on commercial beers?

Everything has to have a sell by date now. What happened to the old sniff test? if it doesn't smell right, don't eat/ drink it.

Standard beer may have quite a short shelf life, however some is brewed specially to have a long shelf life, IPA is a good example made so it could be taken to India by sailing ships and still be OK when it arrived 6 months or more latter, so this should last in an unopened keg for at least a year.

Lager should last even longer, the whole idea of the French process was it would last longer than more traditional methods so should last longer than IPA.

Again the higher the ABV the longer it will last.

So bought three beers from Lidi, all with best by date of around a year, one a bitter at 3.6 ABV% one a lager 4% ABV the the last a PILS 4.5% ABV this does not seem to make sense.

Even my kit home brew which should be the worst beer to keep since using tap water, keeps for a year often two years before I drink it, so why such a short self life on commercial beers?

"FRENCH PROCESS" ???? I know it's customery these days to blame the French for most things including air pollution and bad weather in England but FFS give us a break we didn't inflict a pale tasteless alcoholic drink on the rest of he world

If those beers are all filtered, then from a microbiological point of view, they will last forever.

The issue is oxidation and degradation of the flavour compounds. It is highly unlikely that the brewery measured the levels of all the aldehydes and other off-flavours at bottling, so they can’t assign a unique B.B. date to each batch. If you don’t know how close to the flavour threshold these are at bottling it is difficult to predict when they are going to be noticeable.

They also have no control over the storage temperature, so that is another unknown. Hence the same guesstimate on each bottle.

I think most homebrew peaks between 3-6 weeks from packaging, has a stable period of up to a month or more, after which you are kidding yourself if you think it is still at it’s best (even if it is drinkable). Imperial stout excepted, of course!

A very good podcast by Dr. Charlie Bamworth........
http://beersmith.com/blog/2014/01/31/fl ... odcast-74/

You'd probably be surprised at the results if you got a micro bacterial test done on the beer that you thought was sterile on bottling/kegging...
In response to the original question, it's just past its peak. I had a bottle of St Peters Ruby Red from shop by me, turns out it was a year out of date, and mainly tasted of crystal malt with a weird bubble system going on once I opened it.
Orval etc, designed for laying down, have a BBE of something like 6 years.

A very good podcast by Dr. Charlie Bamworth........
http://beersmith.com/blog/2014/01/31/fl ... odcast-74/

The love the podcasts that the ‘pope of foam’ does. He’s been on the BN a few times too.


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