How Long Does Beer Last In The Fridge – From Fresh to Flat
Unopened | Pantry | Fridge |
---|---|---|
Bottled Beer lasts for | 6-9 Months | 6 months-2 Years |
Canned Beer lasts for | 6-9 Months | 6 months-2 Years |
Homemade Beer lasts for | 6-9 Months | 6 months-2 Years |
Contents
- 1 Does canned beer go bad?
- 2 Can you drink 3 year old canned beer?
- 3 Can you drink 1 year old canned beer?
- 4 Is 2 year old canned beer still good?
- 5 How can you tell if canned beer is bad?
- 6 Can you drink 2 year old canned soda?
- 7 Can wine expire?
- 8 What was the earliest canned beer?
- 9 Can you drink out of date beer 2 years?
- 10 Does whiskey expire?
- 11 Do canned beer go bad if not refrigerated?
- 12 Can beer be stored for a long time?
- 13 Does canned beer taste worse than bottled?
- 14 Can beer get skunked in a can?
Does canned beer go bad?
Does Canned Beer Go Bad? – Yes, canned beer goes bad, but usually more slowly than bottled beer. This is because cans don’t let any light in, so the oxidation process is much slower. However, you shouldn’t expect a five-year-old can of beer to taste as good as the fresh one.
Can you drink 3 year old canned beer?
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.
Can you drink 1 year old canned beer?
Does Beer Expire? – Allagash Brewing Company 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. That tiny amount of air is important.
- There’s no way to package a beer without a miniscule amount of oxygen sticking around.
- At our brewery, we measure this amount in parts per billion.
- With time, that oxygen inside every bottle, can, or keg, changes the beer.
- This is called “oxidation” and is responsible for a range of flavors.
- Some beers will develop a stale, cardboard-like flavor, accompanied by a note of sherry.
More malt-forward beers can develop a sweet, bready, and even toffee-ish flavor. In a beer of ours called —a bourbon barrel-aged Tripel—we’ve noted some of those pleasant toffee and almost caramel-like flavors developing with age. A beer’s “hoppiness” will also dissipate with age.
Hop aromas in particular are notoriously time-sensitive. The bitterness hops impart in the beer will stay in the mouthfeel, but any of those piney, citrusy, or floral hop aromas that characterize a hop-forward beer won’t stick around in an older beer. But what about skunky beer? Light is the culprit there.
Beer ages poorly under any ultraviolet light (thus why a term for properly aging beer is “cellaring” or keeping it in a dark place). Brown bottles and aluminum cans are both effective at blocking out light. But beer in a clear or lighter-colored bottle will develop that signature “skunk-like” flavor if left out.
Another, different staling agent is heat. The higher the heat, the faster the staling. Heat doesn’t create a specific off flavor itself (unlike light). Instead, it acts to speed up the process of oxidation. Our lab actually uses a warm fridge to simulate age in our beer, to get an idea of how it will hold up with time.
Intentionally aging beer is an entirely different subject, and one that’s worth a blog post of its own. But long story short, if you enjoy beer, you’ll want to drink it closer to its release date. It’s the best way to taste the beer as close as possible to the way the brewer intended.
Is 2 year old canned beer still good?
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.
- Now 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.
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Does canned beer last longer than bottled beer?
Average shelf life of a beer. – As stated, beers have an “expiration date” marked on the bottle or can, but that’s more of a guideline than law. It’s mostly for brewers to guarantee that customers won’t drink one that doesn’t taste as it should. To be precise, beer usually lasts for six or nine months after what the label tells you.
How can you tell if canned beer is bad?
The Bottom Line – If your beer’s appearance, taste or smell has changed, your beer has definitely gone bad. Regardless of whether your beer is pasteurised or unpasteurised, drinking bad beer is never recommended because it will taste terrible. No one wants to waste beer.
Can you age beer for years?
Just like glassware, and serving temperature, beer has an implicit (sometimes explicit) “best by” serving date. But beer is a funky thing—there can be wiggle room. Say you don’t want to (or aren’t able to) serve your beer immediately. How long can you keep it? And when, if ever, should you intentionally age it? As it turns out, with beer, fresh is generally better.
Most beers are brewed to be consumed fairly quickly (as in soon after they’re brewed, not “chugged”). And that’s because the volatile compounds that make up beer’s flavor will change, and often deplete, over time, while the proteins that give it body will deteriorate, and oxidization will slowly take hold.
There’s also the possibility that beer in glass bottles (especially green or clear) could be skunked by exposure to light (it doesn’t take much). Hop-forward beers especially are best consumed early, as the volatile hop aroma compounds will be most available sooner after brewing.
- But there is absolutely room in the beer world for aging.
- In fact, all beer can be “aged” (or really, stored ) for a few months (longer when kept in the right conditions).
- But some beer can be aged for, well, ages—from many months to many years.
- Aging beer is always a slight gamble, a calculated risk that the structure and character of the beer will not only stand up to the test of time, but actually improve.
And as with wine, there are a few factors that make a beer more appropriate for aging. Alcohol by volume, or ABV, is one of them. A stronger beer, that’s at least 7 to 9% or above, has a better shot at maintaining some of its character (if not developing more) as it ages (higher alcohol beers tend to have more complex flavors, if only because high alcohol requires more fermentation, not to mention would be also registered as imbalanced in the final brew without other flavors).
And wild beers, or beers fermented with not only traditional yeast but certain microbes associated with wild beer styles (lactobacillus, pediococcus, brettanomyces) have a better shot of improving—or evolving—with age. So what happens when a beer ages? Many things. When a beer ages successfully, yeasts still present can continue to change the character of the beer, certain flavors may dissipate, bringing other flavors center stage, and even certain positive aspects of oxidization may occur.
As for the “right conditions” in which to store and/or age your beer, two elements are essential: dark and (moderate) cold. Beers like to age in creepy places: dank basements, dark garages, anywhere it’s generally cool (55F is a good rule of thumb) and free of sunlight.
- Remember, the UV rays in sunlight can skunk your beer—or impart off-flavors—and while green and clear glass are the most susceptible, an amber glass bottle left in even a bit of sunlight over time has a good chance of being skunked.
- So anytime you’re going to put a beer aside for a period of weeks, months, or even years, make sure there aren’t any sneaky rays of sunlight creeping around.
Also essential is aging and storing beers upright, as is consistency of temperature. And obviously make sure you’re not storing your beer near a heat source. As tempting as it may be, don’t display your beer collection over the family hearth.
Can you drink 2 year old canned soda?
Carbonated soft drinks or sodas are not perishable, and are safe past the date stamped on the container. Eventually flavor and carbonation will decrease.
Can wine expire?
How Long Does Wine Typically Last? – When stored properly and kept unopened, white wines can often outlive their recommended drinking window by 1-2 years, red wines by 2-3 years, and cooking wines by 3-5 years. Fine wine — as you may have guessed — can typically be consumed for decades.
- Wine storage best practices dictate that you keep your wine in a cool, dark space.
- Bottles should be placed on their sides in order to prevent overdrying the cork.
- Opened wine, however, is another matter.
- When you open a bottle of wine, its contents are exposed to heat, light, bacteria, and oxygen.
- These elements cause a variety of chemical reactions that quickly work to affect your wine.
Although storing wine in a cooler temperature can help mitigate these reactions, opened wines will inevitably go bad. In general, white wines go downhill quicker than reds. As a rule of thumb, once opened:
Ports will last between 1-3 weeksDessert wines are good for 3-7 daysRed and rich white wines last roughly 3-6 daysLighter white wines last 4 or 5 daysSparkling wines go quickly, with only 1-2 days to enjoy
To make the most of your opened wine, seal it tightly and store it in the refrigerator. Or better yet, keep a smaller glass vessel (such as an empty 375ml half bottle) on hand to pour the remainder into where there will be less oxygen in contact with the liquid. Just make sure it’s completely clean or sanitized so there is not any cross-contamination.
Does Guinness expire?
If enjoying Guinness at home, you can find an expiration date printed on the base of the can.
What was the earliest canned beer?
If you’ve ever drank beer out of a can, you can thank Gottfried Krueger Brewery. They were the first ones, in 1935, to put the tasty beverage in a can and offer it up to consumers. Wired writes : Krueger had been brewing beer since the mid-1800s, but had suffered from the Prohibition and worker strikes.
When American Can approached with the idea of canned beer, it was initially unpopular with Krueger execs. But American Can offered to install the equipment for free : If the beer flopped, Krueger wouldn’t have to pay. So, in 1935 Krueger’s Cream Ale and Krueger’s Finest Beer were the first beers sold to the public in cans.
Canned beer was an immediate success. The public loved it, giving it a 91 percent approval rating, Compared to glass, the cans were lightweight, cheap, and easy to stack and ship. Unlike bottles, you didn’t have to pay a deposit and then return the cans for a refund.
By summer Krueger was buying 180,000 cans a day from American Can, and other breweries decided to follow. Just think of all the things you couldn’t do had they never filled those aluminum cans with beer? There would be no shotgunning, no crunching the can on your head, no beer can chicken. And, a lot of people would be way less rich.
The History Channel says : Today, canned beer accounts for approximately half of the $20 billion U.S. beer industry. Not all of this comes from the big national brewers: Recently, there has been renewed interest in canning from microbrewers and high-end beer-sellers, who are realizing that cans guarantee purity and taste by preventing light damage and oxidation.
That big business means lots of engineering and development to can a ton of beer as fast as possible. And those higher end breweries, making less beer than the big guys, have to figure out how to do it cost-effectively. How On Earth radio writes : If you’re a beer drinker, you’ve probably noticed that there are a lot of cans on liquor store shelves these days.
Here in Colorado, and elsewhere, more and more breweries are choosing to put their beer in cans. There are some good reasons for that, as you’ll hear in this segment. But for the smallest of small breweries, canning can still be a real challenge. It’s expensive, and it takes up a lot of space.
Enter Mobile Canning, a Longmont-based company that offers brewers a solution to both of those problems: put the canning line on a truck, and take it to any brewery that needs it. We speak with co-owner Pat Hartman in our Boulder studio. Of course, designing a fully-automated canning line is no small feat – to say nothing of designing one that can be packed into a delivery truck.
For that, we turn to Boulder firm Wild Goose Engineering. Chief Technology Officer Alexis Foreman also joins the conversation. Whether high end of tailgate style, canned beer is here to stay. So dedicate your next crushed can to Gottfried Kruger. More from Smithsonian.com: Beer for Dessert Beer Behemoths, Part One Turn Your Dead Christmas Tree Into Beer Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.
Can you drink out of date beer 2 years?
While beers are produced with expiry dates, you don’t always have to adhere to these. If you look on the back of a beer, wine or cider bottle, you’ll likely see a ‘best before’ date. This is different to a ‘use by’ date you’ll usually see on fresh foods like meat and dairy products.
Here’s the difference: ‘use by’ is pretty much a rule. After the stated date, degradation happens quickly, and bacterial build-up means the taste, consistency and safety of the food/drink is compromised. You’re in danger of getting ill if you go past a ‘use by date’, so be wary of the risks. ‘Best before’ is more of a guideline on quality, rather than safety.
It means the item in question will start to lose its quality after the stated date. You can still eat or drink it after this, but it just won’t be as good. It’s usually found on products that don’t need putting in the fridge or freezer, and there’s a big variety in the date ranges between different foods. You won’t see these on spirits, though, as neat liquor lasts practically forever. So, beer. How long does it last? Its ‘best before’ quality changes over quite long time spans, and it differs depending on the beer type. A typical lager will be drinkable 6 – 24 months after its best before date, if it’s been kept in the fridge.
That timeframe tops out at 9 months if it hasn’t been refrigerated, though. Some beers, like people, can actually improve with age. In the same way that wine and whiskey are matured over long timespans, the richer and higher ABV varieties of beer such as porters and stouts can certainly get better with age.
This happens best if they’re kept in cool, dark storage conditions like a basement or cellar. IPAs, on the other hand, don’t fit into this category – especially the hoppy ones. They gradually lose their flavour and aroma over time and are best drunk sooner rather than later.
Does whiskey expire?
How Long Does Whiskey Last After It’s Been Opened? – Whiskey is meant to be enjoyed over time, but once you open a bottle, the clock starts ticking. Most scientists believe that if your bottle is at least half full, it can last one to two years, but if it’s almost empty, with a quarter or less whiskey left, it’ll expire in about six months.
Why is canned beer better?
The Bottom Line – All in all, cans have many advantages over bottles when it comes to packaging beer. Cans preserve taste better than bottles, they are more convenient, and they are easy to recycle over and over. That’s why Sprecher is making the change from brown glass bottles to aluminum cans.
Do canned beer go bad if not refrigerated?
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. Keeping 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.
Can beer be stored for a long time?
How long does beer last? – Craft brewers may have different guidelines for how long beer lasts, but you can store most of our beers for up to 150 days, or roughly five months, when they’re exclusively kept cold. Warm environments and direct sunlight will greatly accelerate that timeline. Craft brewers typically want you to enjoy their beers promptly after they’re packaged; the aromas and flavors they designed into the recipes are at their peak. One sure-fire way to spot a craft beer fan? They’re checking the date codes on beer at the grocery store.
- And craft brewers use different methods of date-coding their products to highlight beer freshness.
- We stamp Sierra Nevada beers with their actual packaging date, or a “born on” date, plus a letter code (C or M) to mark their origins in Chico, CA or Mills River, NC.
- This approach gives drinkers agency when making a purchase; do some quick finger math and decide if it’s fresh enough for you.
And if you stumble upon super old beer, please let us know ! We want the best stuff on your local shelves. On other breweries’ bottles and cans, you may see an “enjoy by” date. (Sounds better than an expiration date, yeah?) They know at what point the flavor tapers off, so they’re encouraging you to get the maximum experience.
How long does canned beer last unopened?
3. On The Faucet – Run the faucet of cold water There are different types of faucet that use a simple machine such as a screw that is very helpful rather than a normal faucet. The screw faucet will stop water from continuously flowing, We should be careful not to waste water because it’s our natural resource.
Does canned beer taste worse than bottled?
4. Aluminum Cans Don’t Impact a Beer’s Flavor – Like many people, you might believe beer tastes better out of a bottle. However, blind taste tests have shown that there’s no consistent difference between the flavors of bottled and canned beer. In 2016, researchers had 151 beer lovers taste the same beer in both cans and bottles.
Then, they tasted each beer in a blind taste test. While more than 61% of the participants preferred bottled beer to canned beer when they saw its container, those numbers didn’t hold up in the blind testing. Instead, the numbers were split almost evenly between canned and bottled beer. If you feel like a canned beer tastes tinny or metallic, it’s not the can’s fault.
All beer cans are lined with a coating that protects the beer. Instead, that metallic taste is likely caused by problems in the brewing process, such as issues with water chemistry and ingredient storage. Remember also that you’re not really supposed to drink your beer out of the can anyway; beer always tastes better poured into a glass, whether it came to you in a can or a bottle.
Can canned beer go sour?
Last year I was making some great beer, but several batches ago I started getting sour flavors in my beer, and it seems to be getting worse with every batch. What can I do? – Your sour-beer problem is almost certainly being caused by bacteria. Bacteria such as Lactobacillus and Pediococcus occur naturally and will infect and rapidly sour a batch of beer if you don’t kill them off using sanitizers.
- These bacteria produce lactic acid and are widely used in sour-beer brewing.
- Poor sanitation could be the cause, but if you have not changed your sanitation process in the past year, it may not be the problem.
- The fact that the problem is occurring from batch to batch and you did not have it earlier indicates that some of your equipment may be infected.
Most likely one or more pieces of equipment on the “cold side” of your system are infected with bacteria, which is then souring your beer during transfer, fermentation, or storage. I say that the “cold side” is the problem because your beer is not subject to infection during the mash, and the boil as the act of boiling will kill any bacteria.
- However, it is possible for your chiller, pump, transfer tubes, fermentor, or even bottling bucket or kegs to be infected.
- The most likely location for an infection is plastic, rubber, or silicone.
- Unfortunately, even a small scratch in a plastic bucket can harbor bacteria that are very difficult to remove.
While stainless-steel and other metals are largely impervious to infection if properly sanitized, it is possible for your fittings, gaskets, valves, pump heads, and tubes to harbor bacteria. At a minimum, I recommend disassembling all of your fittings, hoses, gaskets, valves, pump heads, and other interfaces and giving them a thorough cleaning and then soaking for a bit in sanitizer.
If that fails, you might want to consider replacing old hoses, gaskets, plastic utensils, and other rubber and plastic in your system to eliminate potential sources of an infection. Finally, I want to mention that it is also possible to create sour beer if you have improperly stored ingredients, such as wet malts.
In this case, an infection of the malt before brewing can produce lactic acid in the malt or mash that then can carry forward to the beer. Essentially, you are creating a sour mash. This is far less common than a cold-side bacterial infection, but it is a possibility you should be aware of.
Do canned beer go bad if not refrigerated?
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. Keeping 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.
Can beer get skunked in a can?
CANS ARE BEST FOR UV PROTECTION – There are still many misconceptions surrounding craft beer in cans. In July, Nielsen Research and Brewer’s Association published a survey revealing that consumers associate beer freshness with brown bottles more so than with canned beer.
Infact, 47% claimed that they would buy bottled beer for freshness reasons. Only 4% of consumers reported purchasing canned beer for the same reason. Aluminum cans are much better at preserving beer than brown bottles for a number of reasons. The biggest advantage cans offer is their ability to block light.
Everybody has had a skunky beer at least once in their beer drinking careers. When UV rays come in contact with beer there is a real chemical reaction that takes place. This change actually creates some of the same chemicals found in the spray of a skunk which is why it can smell and taste like, well, a skunk.
Does canned beer go bad at room temperature?
My Beer Delivery Arrived Cold. Will it Go Bad if I Don’t Put it in the Fridge Right Away? Keeping a beer cold is what helps a beer stay fresher longer, but it’s a pervasive myth that if you allow a cold beer to become warm, something bad will happen to it.
- The most common misconception is that if a cold beer becomes warm, and then is cooled down again, it will skunk, but skunking comes from, not temperature fluctuations.
- If you’ve just accepted a fresh beer delivery from your local shop or brewery, but don’t seem to have enough space in the fridge (trust me, I’ve been there), don’t worry about needing to make room right away.
The beer will be fine if you leave it at room temperature in your home. In other words, not in a hot garage, or out on the deck in the hot sun, unless it’s winter (and not freezing out). That type of extreme heat — think 80-plus degrees — will, in fact, ruin the beer.