BoozeDude
New Member
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I had a quick tour around the interwebs looking for advice about out of date brew kits, but all I found was the vendors and manufacturers advising against using them (well, they would, wouldn't they?)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So out came a couple of brew buckets, some brewing sugar (also probably well out of date, but I didn't bother to check).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 I'll take a gravity reading then pitch the yeast tomorrow (that's a point, the yeast is probably well out of date too, and I know that actually can die as it were, so I might have to buy some new ale yeast).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kits, but regardless I'll be buying more kits again soon enough, but it'll be interesting to see what comes of these out of date kits.
Anyone else got any experience with out of date brew kits?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.
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I had a quick tour around the interwebs looking for advice about out of date brew kits, but all I found was the vendors and manufacturers advising against using them (well, they would, wouldn't they?)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.
