When Does Beer Expire? – At room temperature, beer lasts about 5 to 9 months beyond the expiration date listed on the label. In a refrigerator, beer can last up to an additional two or three years. This applies to bottled beer, cans, growlers, you name it.
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Does Corona beer have an expiration date?
What is the shelf life for Corona? – While there are many factors that contribute to beer shelf life, we have found that in order to enjoy the consistently fresh taste of Corona, it is best to drink within the timeframe of the code date printed on the product packaging.
Does beer expire or go bad?
Yes—but its flavor will degrade over time. Beer is a perishable product that stales when it’s exposed to light, oxygen, and heat, which degrade the organic compounds that make beer smell and taste great. But even when its flavor is declining, it can be perfectly safe to drink.
How long will bottled beer last?
What is the shelf life of beer? – The shelf life of beer will depend on the container and location of storage. If stored properly in a refrigerated area, bottled beer will last up to six months. If stored in a warm environment, bottled beer can spoil in three months. Other containers, such as crowlers and growlers have shorter shelf lives.
Does beer expire 1 year?
A question we get often: does beer expire? Short answer, no. Beer isn’t like milk. With age, it doesn’t actually expire or become unsafe to drink. Old beer’s taste, however, will absolutely change. But stored properly, an old beer’s effect on your body won’t be different than a freshly packaged beer.
How does that work? The wort—or unfermented beer—is basically Pasteurized by the brewing process, effectively killing off any unwanted organisms. Once the beer is fully fermented, it creates an environment in which the types of pathogens or bacteria that can cause harm aren’t able to survive. This is due to the combination of alcohol, the beer’s low pH, and the antimicrobial activity of hops.
There are quite a few other microbes that can live in these conditions, but they’re not harmful. This means that in a properly brewed and packaged beer, you’ll just find the beer’s ingredients and a teensy bit of air.
How do I know if my beer is bad?
4. It has a weird taste (like cabbage or sewage) – on unsplash Despite the fact that there are tons of weird beer flavors out there, it should be pretty clear if the flavor you’re tasting is not intentional. Some common flavors that can indicate a bad beer are cooked cabbage, sewage, sulphur, or just an abnormally sour taste.
Is it bad to store beer at room temperature?
Temperature does affect beer. However, it is not temperature cycling that destroys beer, but exposure to warm temperatures. Beer is best preserved when kept cold kind of like milk. A gallon of 2% will last a lot longer in your fridge than on your kitchen counter.
- Much the same way, keeping beer refrigerated will keep its flavor as the brewer intended for much longer.
- Eeping beer at room temperature can drop a beer’s shelf life from nearly six months to only a few weeks, and exposing the same beer to very warm temperatures can affect its flavor in a matter of a couple of days.
The good news? It can never make you sick. It just might not taste very good. Hop flavors and aromas will be diminished, first. Malt flavors that used to remind you of chocolate and caramel will begin to meld into a generic sickly “sweet” flavor, and in some beers reminders of wet cardboard and paper can develop.
Is beer still good after 6 months?
The Average Shelf Life Of Beer – It is important to note that all beers don’t ‘expire’ the same way. It has a lot to do with the beer’s ABV composition and of course, how it has been packaged and stored. Higher ABV beers (8% and above) like Stouts and Barleywines actually taste better with age so leaving them on the shelf for a few years is ideal, provided you take careful steps to store it properly.
- Lambics are also more suitable for ageing as they are wild-fermented and the Brettanomyces yeast consumes the complex sugars over a long period of time.
- This is why Lambics are aged in oak barrels for three to six months – and sometimes even a year! Opened beer will naturally have a shorter lifespan as it goes flat the moment you break open the air-tight seal, even if you refrigerate it! As a general rule of thumb, sealed beer is shelf-stable for 6 to 8 months without refrigeration.
If stored and refrigerated properly, sealed beer can last beyond its expiration date up to 12 months.
How do you check if a beer is expired?
Does Beer Expire? – Firestone Walker Brewing Company
Frequently Asked Questions
Ask brewers and craft beer aficionados alike, and there’s one thing they can all agree on: fresh beer is the best beer. One of the most relatable disappointments among beer drinkers is finally cracking open a can of a beer you’ve been looking forward to and realizing it just doesn’t taste right.
- But we’re here to help.
- Read on to find out whether beer can actually “go bad,” how to store your beer to lengthen its life, and how to identify the age of the beers on your shelf.
- The short answer is yes, beer expires.
- But it’s a bit more complicated than just saying it can “go bad,” as it depends exactly what you mean by that.
“Pathogens cannot live in beer, so from a health standpoint, beer cannot go bad,” explained Firestone Walker Sensory Research Analyst Craig Thomas. “But age and temperature have a huge impact on how all beer tastes. Some beer styles retain the ‘fresh factor’ better than others, and many brewers have gotten very good at slowing the rate of aging flavors developing in their beer.
But the fresher your beer, the better!” Like other foods, beer is made from organic plant ingredients that eventually decay. Brewers work to make the beer last as long as possible, and they have some major advantages – the alcohol content, beer’s low pH, and the antimicrobial activity of hops. When properly brewed and packaged, the only things in your beer are the ingredients and the smallest amount of air.
It is impossible to package beer without a small amount of oxygen coming along with it. Over time, that oxygen can change the beer itself, sometimes adding a stale flavor described as “cardboard.” Not all beers are affected by oxidation in the same way, though.
- For example, malty beers sometimes develop sweet, grainy, caramel, and toffee notes.
- The speed of oxidation can be affected by major temperature swings, so it’s best to keep your beers cool.
- A beer’s hoppiness can also diminish after a while.
- Hop aromas are very time-sensitive, so the citrusy, floral, or tropical hop aromas we love in hop-forward beers will disintegrate over time.
And finally, you’ve probably heard of “skunked” beer. It’s a that skunky beer is caused by temperature swings, but it’s actually more the result of light exposure. To put it simply, the chemicals in hops react poorly with ultraviolet light. That’s why you’ll see many bottled beers in dark-colored glass – it allows less light to get through and impact the liquid.
This one’s easy: beer should be stored for a short time in a dark, cool place. If you have room in your fridge, that is the best spot. If the fridge is full, keeping your beer in the basement or a cool closet is the next-best option. Needless to say, the hot trunk of a car or a sunny kitchen counter are some of the worst places for your beer – so keep its time in locations like that to a minimum.
Curious about shelf life? Remember the 3/30/300 Rule: A Firestone beer stored at 98-degrees Fahrenheit for 3 days is equivalent to one stored at 72-degrees Fahrenheit for 30 days or one stored at 35-degrees Fahrenheit for 300 days. Almost every beer has a date printed on it, which will help you understand how long the beer will taste the way the brewers intended – assuming it’s been stored properly.
At Firestone Walker, we make it easy with a “born on” date. This date, found on the bottom of cans or the bottle label, notes when the beer was packaged. We use a month/day/year format followed by a time stamp. (ex: 1/1/23 23:40) Our lagered beers – like,, or any of our stouts – have a six-month shelf life.
Other beers like,, and have a four-month shelf life. Other breweries use what is called a Julian date code. It’s often 3 numbers followed by one more digit. The first three digits represent the day of the year, with the last digit being the last number of the year.
For example, 165 3 would be the 165th day of 2023 (June 13th). Sometimes this number can appear as 0165 – with the year coming first, followed by the day of the year. Lastly, some breweries put a best-by date on their packaging. Know that the closer you are to the best-by date, the older the beer. Some beers develop admirable flavors over time, and intentionally aging beer is a hobby of its own.
As a rule of thumb, if you enjoy drinking beer, you want to drink it closer to the day it was brewed. That is how you get to taste the beer the way the brewers intended it to be. Deadset on cellaring that bottle of 2023 Parabola to try next year? We get it.
Aging beer allows various flavors not immediately present to develop over time. Just remember that not all beers are good candidates for the effects of gentle aging and cellaring. Beers that can be cellared: Barleywines, Imperial Stouts, Belgian style Quads, and other high-ABV beers with dark malts. Barrel-aged sours and rauchbiers are lower ABV, but they can age beautifully.
Beers that shouldn’t be cellared: Any beers with hop-forward characteristics, such as IPAs and Pale Ales. Most lagers and session beers are also poor candidates for aging and should be consumed fresh. Read our blog on for more tips on properly aging your beer.
Want to avoid old beer? Use our to discover where you can get fresh Firestone beers. Need to report expired beer from a retailer?, Join us to get exclusives on beers, merch, events, news and more: We use cookies to offer you a better browsing experience. Cookies enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts.
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How do you read the expiration date on beer?
Know Thy Codes: Fresh Beer = Better Beer Beer-drinking usually leads to talking about beer and I’m ever-surprised by what people know, don’t know, think they know or just kinda fabricate (aka, “that’s the beer talking”). (And there’s always more to know, as ace beer writer Jason Notte tweeted last week, “The more I cover the #beer industry, the more clear it is how little I know about it.”).
- One topic that often pops up during a round of beer-drinking-and-talking is getting burned by buying brews that are malingering on shelves looooong past their freshness window (and even the best beer stores have old stock hanging around).
- So here’s an intro to how to break those vexing beer codes,
- Nowing when the beer was made is vital knowledge, particularly for those mega-popular, mega-hopped IPAs; the aromas, flavor and bitterness drop off quickly.
Unfortunately, many brewers still don’t make it easy to figure out when their beer was bottled or canned. There is a morass of confounding letter/number combos: Julian dates, best before dates (but when were they packaged?!), codes that don’t specify whether it’s a born-on or pull-by date, etc.
- Some codes are printed on the glass and are easily smudged; others are on the label but are near-impossible to read, overlapping with the imagery and label copy.
- Even worse: Some codes are only stamped on the case, not the individual containers.
- Most consumers have no idea what those letters and numbers mean.
Want to decode the “2JT” on Anchor Brewing’s bottles and cans? Um, it’s “easy”! Quoth their website: “The first character is always numeric and represents the last digit of the year. The second character is always alpha and represents the month by using the first letter of the month unless that letter has already been used.” Months are coded thusly: J = Jan, F = Feb, M = Mar, A = Apr, Y = May, U = Jun, L = Jul, G = Aug, S = Sep, O = Oct, N = Nov, D = Dec.
“The third character in the code is either alpha or numeric and tells the day of the month. The first 26 days are represented by the alphabet with the remaining days listed as: 27th through 29th = 7 through 9; 30th= 3; 31st= 1. An example of a date code would be January 20, 2012 = 2JT.” See? Easy! (Check out the image on this page for Ballast Point’s code breakdown.) Advertisement But there’s a handy one-stop to crack most of the brewers’ codes: Fresh Beer Only ().
Looking at Lagunitas? “Uses a bottling date. Julian date code, which is written in black on the neck of the bottle. There are two lines. First line has 3 digits followed by a space, then one more digit. The first three digits represent the day of the year, last digit is the last number of the year.
- Ex: 135 3 would be the 135th day of 2013 (May 15).
- Second line is batch number and military time.” And you’ll need to know that Magic Hat skips a letter: “Uses a production date.
- Ex.: M051.
- M= December (A=January, B=Feb, etc.
- I is skipped, so J=September, etc.), 05= 5th day, 1= 2011.
- Recommended shelf life 120 days from that date.” Ouch, my head hurts! But Fresh Beer Only can help ease the pain.
Pro tip: There’s a sure-fire way to get brand-new beer – buy local! Visit our beermakers to enjoy the freshest fermented beverages in 401 Land! No codes required! For more beer news, check Lou’s blog, bottlescansclaphands.wordpress.com, or follow @BottlesCansRI.