Crushed Malt - How old is too old?

[BottlesCansCraft]

Hi,

I took a break from brewing since the start of 2022, but still have a lot of crushed grain that I purchased from Maltmiller around that time. The was a best before date of Mar'22 on it, but how "strict" is this date. I want to still use this if I can to avoid throwing it out.

Is there anyway you can tell grain is too "out of date" to use? - currently looks and smells fine

What would happen to my beer (at the worst) is I brewed with it anyway?

Cheers

 

[The Baron]

If it looks good smells good and tastes good yes taste it use it. It is not as critical as it was thought to be and the only down side is you may lose a little efficiency.
My thoughts are give it a brew and that will be the definitive answer but I would do a basic brew so that on the off chance anything did go wrong you have not wasted a lot of expensive hops.
Give it a go I would

 

[borischarlton]

To brew the best beer possible you need the freshest ingredients. There is a really good reason that pretty much the whole brewing world crushes malt directly into the mash tun ( or variations of ) except in the UK. In many countries, crushed malt is really hard to get.
Anyhow, at least you exactly when that malt was crushed And, yes, I would use it, it will make beer. As said above, your efficiency maybe slightly less.

 

[BottlesCansCraft]

Sounds like it's usable then, and best not to leave grain this long in the future. Thanks for the advice

 

[An Ankoù]

I've often wondered if the bbe date stamped on a sack of malt refers to the whole malt, which is then crushed and put back into the same sack.
If your malt is kept perfectly dry and in an airtight container it should be good for a number of years. Consider a bag of baking flour, it's ground to a powder and kept in a paper bag in the supermarket and then in your steamy kitchen and it's still good for a year or so. True, it's not expected to convert itself, but your crushed malt should be fine. Crystal malts tend to go off more quickly in my experience.

 

[LeeH]

I use my old malt for sours.

 

[Dark Arts]

Hi,

I took a break from brewing since the start of 2022, but still have a lot of crushed grain that I purchased from Maltmiller around that time. The was a best before date of Mar'22 on it, but how "strict" is this date. I want to still use this if I can to avoid throwing it out.

Is there anyway you can tell grain is too "out of date" to use? - currently looks and smells fine

What would happen to my beer (at the worst) is I brewed with it anyway?

Cheers

Did you brew anyway?...what was the result?

I was given an US gallon all grain starter kit that has been sat in a mates loft for several years, looked to see if it would still be viable to brew etc etc and though, what the hell and tried it anyway, first go at all grain so had nothing to refer to except YT n forums, what could possibly go wrong choc stout

Steep/mashed the grains, took a OG and did a temp adjustment 1.056, wasn't sure how much of this was fermentable sugars so added some brewing sugar and did the boil, added the hops in the kit, vaccum sealed smelt ok, cooled down in the sink and took a OG at 25° 1.094 oops added 500ml of water to bring it up to 4.5ltr, pitched some us-05 that I had and it's been fermenting away for a 5days before it's slowed down, took gravity reading 1.020 and it's still fermenting, tasted it and it's full of flavour nothing to indicate old crushed grains have degraded overly much to my untrained tasted buds.....so what have I learnthow to make an imperial stout and crossmyloof do 4.5ltr kits from £9.99.

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

For what it's worth I brewed recently with crushed base malt that was a good 12 months past its 'BBE' date and it was absolutely fine - didn't even notice any drop in efficiency.
So long as it's been kept reasonably cool and sealed up away from moisture it should be good.

 

[Griff097]

When I started AG brewing the all in one I bought came with 5 grain kits that were 5 years old, my mate said as long as there is no mold etc and they don't smell off crack on, maybe get new yeast, I used the old yeast and all was fine.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

All grain goes stale, and it does affect the taste - but whether that matters is up to you. IME 2-year-old grain does taste different, but only when tasted side-by-side with beer made from fresh grain, you probably wouldn't notice on its own.

And the kind of beer will also make a difference - stale grain will be more obvious in a helles than in something super-hoppy.

 

[Dark Arts]

Ok so up date on my experience, just cracked open a bottle brewed from an old old all grain kit, at a guess it's 2yrs+ old, it's now had 2weeks conditioning, did half at room temp and the other half cooled down some what(accidentally brewed an imperial porter 9%) so how did it taste...bloody fan tastic I've been drinking random commercial brews along the choc porter/stout theme and in my slightly inebriated opinion it's as good as if not better that the stuff I've been sampling.

So for something I wasn't holding out much hope for, it has turned out quite good and has err give me a taste for the all grain brewing.

 

[Old Fart At Play]

it has turned out quite good and has err give me a taste for the all grain brewing.

Result!