Brewing from out of date beer kits

It's a long story, but the short bit is that I found some old beer brewing kits in a cupboard today and decided to brew them up.

The kits were well past their Best Before End dates, the cans had bulged ever so slightly, and when I cracked open two of them there was a bit of a hiss of gas escaping. One I opened was BBE sometime in 2020 (Coopers English Ale) and the other 2022 (John Bull IPA) I think it was (might of been 2021, I don't remember).

I had a quick tour around the interwebs looking for advice about out of date brew kits, but all I found was the vendors and manufacturers advising against using them (well, they would, wouldn't they?) saying that the beer might brew up a different colour, or different taste, and horror of horrors it might not contain as much alcohol as a fresh brew kit would make.

Pffft! they were not saying "Danger! Danger Booze Dude! Poison! Poison!" so I thought I'd give it a go. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, and if they turn into buckets of rot I can always tip them down the drain.

So out came a couple of brew buckets, some brewing sugar (also probably well out of date, but I didn't bother to check).

Everything smells fine, and looks fine, it all went together just like I remember (it's been a while since I brewed). I'll take a gravity reading then pitch the yeast tomorrow (that's a point, the yeast is probably well out of date too, and I know that actually can die as it were, so I might have to buy some new ale yeast). I always leave my brew mixture overnight before pitching, just to let everything settle including the temperature.

Regardless of the outcome, and I've still got another IPA kit and a cider kit left in the cupboard, I'll have to do some more household archaeology to see if I can find more kits, but regardless I'll be buying more kits again soon enough, but it'll be interesting to see what comes of these out of date kits.

Anyone else got any experience with out of date brew kits? What results did you get? Good/bad?

Cheers.

Think this has been discussed previously, as you say the extract may have darkened and be more bitter, yeast is probably definitely past it and needs replacing, but fair chance it will make nice drinkable beer

https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/threads/out-of-date-beer.105217/

I've made the odd out of date one before now. Always swap out the yeast, I tried one once with the out of date yeast and it didn't get going. Yeast really does deteriorate on the shelf, it may be better if you'd kept it refrigerated since buying the kit but it seems unlikely. Even if it gets going you risk a stuck fermentation due to the reduced number of live cells in the packet. Aside from that they've always turned out fine.

I know everyone has their ways and means but I was always taught that getting the yeast into the wort as soon as feasibly possible is the best way to go, personally I wouldn't like to leave it overnight unless absolutely necessary.

Pitching sooner allows the yeast to "take hold" faster before any other nasties, such as wild yeasts floating around in the air, have a chance to multiply. I make up my kits with as little hot / boiled water as I can then when topping up the fermenter have another freshly boiled kettle on hand. As I get to within a few litres of the final volume I give it a stir and take the temperature, too cold, add a bit from the kettle, too hot, keep adding the cold. That way I usually end up within a degree or two of my desired fermentation temperature at the end and I can pitch the yeast immediately. Occasionally in the summer months when the water coming out of the tap is not so cold it may end up a few degrees over but so long as it's within maybe five degrees of what I want I pitch anyway. I have fermentation fridges so it goes in there after and quickly gets cooled to the target temperature.