Found 6 year old bag of wheat malt extract and it smells good

[OSUmoney83]

So I'm getting back into brewing, after catching a couple minutes of Alton Brown's homebrew good eats.

I unpacked my equipment after what has to be 6 years of brewing, and found a bag of wheat malt extract, which has now hardened into a caramel solid. It actually smells really good. it's sweet too.

Can anyone tell me what happened to it? Can it be used to make your next beer, like as a primer or anything?

 

[Calder]

You are good, use it, but treat it like an practice batch.

The ingredients are not going to be the best, but it makes cheap beer after a lay-off. I stopped for 7 years, used my left-overs ... made 'OK' beer, but fresh would have been better.

 

[OSUmoney83]

I plan on buying some more fresh extract and hops. This was just a small ziplocked bag of wheat extract for starters or primer I believe.

I'm curious why it solidified why it did, liquid must've gotten in? It smells perfectly good, it is solid and a caramel color and broke in half in the bag with a couple flakes, which are sweet.

Just wondering If I somehow stumbled on something totally awesome to prime my beer or use as a starter, or just toss it...

 

[Quaker]

DME is really hygroscopic. It probably slowly absorbed moisture from the air over time. It dissolves even in cold water, which is handy as it helps reduce the messiness compared to trying to add it to a pot with steam coming up.

 

[Stauffbier]

I read a thread last night about a guy that found extract, grains, and hops that were 10 years old. He brewed it up and said it tasted good... Go figure!

 

[EllisTX]

That's awesome. I found some pizza I had forgot about in the back of the fridge!! Looks like it's our lucky day

Only way to find out if it's good is to use it. I wouldn't dump a bunch of $ in hops in it or anything. Make a simple no frills wheat beer with some dry yeast. Dump a bunch of orange peel, a bit of coriander, and some Cascades in it and see what happens.