how old is beer

[artyb]

when i buy a beer from the shop, in a bottle or can ... how old is it......weeks, months ..?

when i buy a draught beer in a pub..if i can afford it...lol..... how old will that be..do they vary...?

i really ask as,
we are all encouraged to condition/mature our brews..and then sometimes i read than fresh/young brews are the best way to drink beer... :wha:

will a shop bought beer improve if i age it ... :? ......like wines that are laided down...

 

[Kyral210]

Big breweries want you to believe that fresh young beer is the best because they have no way of maturing it (and make loads of money) so instead they just lie to you until you believe the lies.

Think of it this way. A real lager is fermented slowly and then stored for secondary for months at very low temperatures. This gives the character and flavour.

Barley Wine, Russian Imperial Stout and the like are aged for years just to develop the flavour and complexity.

Hell, even a Youngs kit will taste better on week 4 in the bottle than week 8.

Generally, all beer styles have a peek flavour after which they go down hill. This is generally caused by oxidation over time. Your barrel of ale in the pub will keep for X many weeks in the barrel until it oxidises. When it is opened oxygen gets in and it is dead in 3 days.

In short, maturing is very important and if you dont believe me then brew a batch, taste on week 2, leave until week 6 (or longer) and taste again.

 

[Aleman]

The commercial trade is generally a 'running' one, and most of the real ales you see in pubs will be around 10-14 days old (From pitching!!). Basically you see a 3-4 day ferment, crash cooled 1-2 points above TG . . .possibly moved to a racking tank for a day . . . casked . . . fined and shipped. . . .Some pubs expect to put the cask on on the day it arrives in the cellar.

 

[MikeB]

When I was a publican I ran a place in Loughborough for best part of a year.

It had a wonderful cellar - perfect year-round temperature and two great big long thralls along which I could comfortably keep about five or six 18 gallon casks on each side. Pretty much the only thing I sold was Pedigree... It would arrive green but I would sell it a couple of days either side of the official best before date (normally about five to six weeks after delivery), by which time it had matured beautifully. Best beer I ever managed to keep - none of the cellars I had after this were big enough to deal with the throughput to be able to keep it for as long.

 

[jamesb]

The commercial trade is generally a 'running' one, and most of the real ales you see in pubs will be around 10-14 days old (From pitching!!). Basically you see a 3-4 day ferment, crash cooled 1-2 points above TG . . .possibly moved to a racking tank for a day . . . casked . . . fined and shipped. . . .

Lovely. If you like completely flat beer.

Unless they're using conditioning tanks, it's usually left in the cold room for a week or so to condition before going out of the door. I prefer to leave it two.

[/quote]Some pubs expect to put the cask on on the day it arrives in the cellar.[/quote]

Yep. Muppets.

 

[pjbiker]

The 5BBL microbrewer I know works much like Aleman says. fermentation for about 4 days, crash cools to 10degrees for a couple of days to drop the yeast out, racks to casks with finings and no priming. He keeps the casks at 10degrees for at least a week before shipping and labels with a 6 weeks from brewing best before date (longer, 10 weeks I think, for higher gravities).

I think for the original question about beer in the shops? Anything in that isn't bottle conditioned ale will be pasteurised and filtered before bottling or canning. This will give it a very long shelf life but generally removes any benefit of keeping it to 'mature' as with bottle conditioned ales ie. with yeast in the bottle.

Bottle conditioned ales will keep for years, and improve to an (indefinable?) point.

I do wonder how long and at what temperature commercial lagers are fermented and conditioned. If their marketing and proliferation in the 70's and 80's was due to the ability to mass produce in a short time, I'd have thought that a faster fermenting ale (higher temp) would be a more profitable choice?