Beer is not invincible; In fact, it is a food product. As such, it is subject to ruin at the hands of a few elements…
Light: Light is terrible for your beer. UV rays can affect the flavor of the hops in a negative way giving you a ‘skunky’ taste to your beer. Ever had a beer out of a clear bottle? These bottles let the most amount of light in, which gives it that ‘tropical hop note’ (hence why you put a lime into a Corona, to balance the skunky flavor). Green bottles let less light in than clear, but more than dark brown, which is why european style beers that use those types of bottle get a slight skunkiness. Dark brown bottles let the least amount of light in of the three, and therefore protect the beer from spoilage better. But if you really want to get technical, cans are the best way to store a beer…
Temperature: Temperature change is detrimental to beer in that it will accelerate the aging process. Moving beer from hot to cold and back again is one of the worst things you can do; your beer will develop a cardboardy/stale taste and will taste more like a 6 month old beer than anything else. Once your beer is cold, keep it cold.
Time: As a food product, beer will age. Quite unlike wine or cheese, beer degrades in flavor over time. It does contain two natural preservatives (hops and alcohol) so as long as the seal is unbroken, the beer won’t kill you. It will, however, start tasting worse with age. Stale taste can come from old beer, but beers with live yeast (bottle conditioned) can develop other putrid flavors over time. So drink up when you buy your beer, don’t save it.
Oxygen: Another detrimental element to beer is oxygen. Like i mentioned in my post about pouring beer, getting too much interaction with oxygen is also detrimental to flavor. I’m sure many of you have drank from the party keg the next morning (or even later). The tap you are using is displacing beer with oxygen which will oxidize the beer.
So in shorter terms, keep your beer in a cool, dark place. Drink it sooner, rather than later. Oxygen is good for you, bad for beer.
~Sláinte
Good tips! I unfortunately dislike the fact that beer is not invincible or age like cheese and wine. But it gives me a good reason to drink it as soon as I buy it
This is all good stuff to read about, at this point I have followed this blog pretty regularly and it is always fun for me to learn, or be reminded of little interesting facts like this. For example how many people out there actually think that they should consider the type of bottle or storage method when selecting a beer. I think that some people have learned to do things like associate clear bottles with cheap beer, or green bottles with skunky beer, but I don’t think nearly as many now why the connection exists. Interesting stuff, this beer knowledge, it likes a fine art. Is there such thing as a sommelier for beer, if not there should be? To pose a question, what can be the negative effects of storing a beer meant to be consumed at room temperature in a cold place?