Beer is one of the finest beverages you may find online. Millions of people drink beer as a daily routine. However, when you buy a beer, you usually buy bottled beer. That’s how the industry works to ensure its profits and customers’ convenience.
All bottled products share a requirement by law to write their expiration date at the bottom of the bottle.
However, with beer and other perishable products, you may have to challenge yourself to drink the beer even after its expiration date. It’s the alcohol that keeps it in good shape no matter what happens to the rest of the ingredients.
Let’s look at bottled beer and see how bottling affects the expiration date. Also, we will answer the eternal question of what will happen to you if you decide to drink an officially expired bottled beer. Cope with us to read the rest of the article and get the most precise and updated responses.
How Long Will Bottled Beer Last?
Bottled beer usually lasts for six months on supermarket shelves. However, that timeframe is purely informative since many factors play a crucial role in the bottled beer expiry date.
First, it has to do with the alcohol percentage in the beer. The higher the percentage, the more time your beer can take to expire.
Also, the storage conditions can make your beer expire in a shorter time than the one you see at the bottom of your beer bottle.
For instance, if you keep your beer in warm places or close to the sunlight, you can have it perished in less than three months.
On the contrary, if you keep it in a dark room or ever refrigerated, you can extend the expiration time by three months or up to a year.
Usually, bottled beers have been pasteurized, and that process will not make your beer last more than six months.
That’s why it’s better to follow the producer’s suggestion and drink your bottled beer before the six-month milestone.
How Do you Know if Your Bottled beer is Expired?
When you open your beer bottle, you should smell the content. If your bottled beer smells and tastes funny when you open it, then it’s definitely expired.
Also, you can perform the foam test. Expired beer will never give you a rich foam when you pour it into your beer glass.
That’s the main reason to stop drinking that beer because it could be dangerous for your health.
Bottled beer will be good for six months, but sometimes it’s better not to rely on the expiration date but rather use your senses to determine what is right and wrong to drink at any given time.
Are There Different Expiration Dates for Beer in Cans and Bottles?
The short answer is yes. Beer producers know that bottles are less sealed than aluminum cans.
That allows the UV radiation from the sunlight to pass through the glass and perish the beer inside. Also, they are more vulnerable to temperature uprises than aluminum cans.
For that reason, canned beer can last for longer compared to bottled beer. The expiration date can differ for several months, reaching one year in some cases. So it’s better to go for a canned beer when you are not able to consume it right away from the bottle.
Can an Expired Beer Get you Drunk?
An expired beer will get you drunk as easily as a fresh beer. Alcohol is the sole internal component in the beer that can make you drunk.
And there is no correlation between the perishable beer matter and the concentration of alcohol in your bottled beer.
You will have the same amount of alcohol if your beer is fresh and if your beer is expired.
So, you better drink responsibly and stop drinking your expired beer if it tastes and smells funny. Germs and bacteria could have contaminated it and caused a stomach illness that could be dangerous for you.
Does Expiration Affect the Beer Taste and Foam Qualities?
The expiration date is the farthest timeframe that keeps your bottled beer as good as the fresh one.
It surely affects the beer taste and the foam qualities. That happens because some of the sugars and proteins that give taste to the beer suddenly go off and disappear.
When that happens, all the flavored substances transform into others that smell funny and taste awful.
That’s why the foam creation gets affected too. Some proteins can use carbon dioxide to dissolve, and that’s why there is no foam creation when you have a beer that has recently expired.
Is There Something You Can Do With Expired Bottled beer?
Expired bottled beer is not to vanish through your sink. There are many uses for your expired bottled beer. The first one would be to add it to your freshly baked bread before you enter it into the oven.
Adding expired beer to the dough will give you the best taste and make your bread look much more inflated when you finally bake it. If you don’t think it’s a good idea to use that beer on food, you can keep it for cleaning the house.
Expired beer has great cleaning abilities. You can spread it on carpets and toilets to ensure you can remove all the organic stains that make it impossible for you to clean.
Major Factors to Affect the Bottled Beer Expiration Date
As mentioned before, one of the greatest factors to affect the expiration beers of bottled beer is temperature and sunlight. That’s why all beer masters keep their bottled beer in the dark refrigerators they rarely open.
Another factor to affect the expiration date is oxidization. You should keep the bottle caps in the best possible shape. Even a slight hit could allow some oxygen particles to pass inside the beer and make it go off.
Final Words
Bottled beer can expire and will do so if you don’t keep it in the right place. Find a place to store your bottled beer if you like to consume it as if it was fresh.
