My 48yr old unopened bottle of beer. (Circa 1975)
My 48yr old unopened bottle of beer. (Circa 1975)
I saw the String cheese post so I thought I'd share my own "slightly beyond best before date" consumable. I used to have two of them that I had found in my attic under some insulation, but the other one froze in my garage and broke open. (No, it did NOT smell pleasant. I'm pretty sure whatever vile liquid is in that thing does not resemble beer in any way, shape, or form.)
It's perched on a flashlight to try and show the sediment that's built up on the bottom of the bottle.
Advertisement for the beer https://stubby.ca/view-ad.php?id=19
As someone born in the 70s, I have to correct you - 1975 was not 48 years ago. 30 maybe. 35, tops.
I was born in 1977 and it's been the 90s for decades now as far as I'm concerned.
My wardrobe agrees.
I like your math. I'm from 72, So I'll have to agree with you there.
A storage room in the basement of my parents' house had a huge amount of liquor and wine. They weren't alcoholics, professors just always bring a bottle of something with them when they come over for dinner. Because they weren't alcoholics, most of it sat there for years. I remember they had cans of Michelob from the 70s when I was in high school in the 90s. They still had pull tabs instead of pop tabs.
I stole a lot of that liquor as a teenager, but I left that beer alone.
One set of foster parents I lived with had a bar in the basement. My foster brother and I used to sneak shots of the hard stuff, then top up the levels with water to make it look like it wasn't touched. Thankfully they didn't really drink either so we didn't get busted for a long time doing that.
My parents had a can of tecate in their fridge dating to a 4th of July party we had in 1985... until finally around 2004, my brother's friend drank it. He didn't really have much of a comment on the quality.
You know, there are some kinds of beer that are intended to be aged. I have one bottle of a Russian Imperial Stout that I brewd 7 years ago. But the beer you referred in you post is definitely not the aging kind. In fact, it's supposed to be consumed as fresh as possible. A sample with that age have definitely gone bad.
I have a suspicion that this stuff was probably pretty bad the day it was bottled.
Hahaahahahhahah indeed!!
Some beers are bottle conditioned, but generally liquor, wine and beer are aged in barrels and don't continue to mature in the bottle.
Not quite right though. Beers like Dubbel, Trippel and Quad, Barley wine, Russian Imperial Stouts, Acid beers and so on keep maturation when bottled. One can try this experiment: get yourself 2 bottles of Orval, drink one right way and take notes. Than, drink the other one 2 ~ 4 year later. You'll get a completely different beer. For my taste, 2 years is the sweet spot. In fact, the only way to keep the bottled beer to maturate is pasteurization, which is not a good practice taste wise.
Crack it open and chug one for the team
If this one smells anything like the other one that broke, I'd be launching my cookies the second the cap came off.