Making Beer Using Really Old Ingredients

[STStunner]

I recently did what I thought to be nearly impossible. I successfully brewed a six gallon batch of English pale ale from ingredients that were several years out of date. I found the unused ingredients in an old cardboard storage box that I had put away back in late 2015. The yeast had a best by date of February 2016 and the dry and pre hopped liquid malt extract both contain a best by date of August 2016. The beer turned out and tastes mostly fine, which is far more than I was expecting. One person who tried it even thought that it's one of the better finished batches of beer that I've made over the past several years. My only small compliant is the lack of noticeable hop character in this completed batch of beer, but with the ingredients being as old as they are, I'm just proud that it fermented out at all. This homebrew beer doesn't have to be anything award winning for me to still be able to enjoy the final result. I didn't even use a yeast starter, I merely pitched the entire contents of the outdated dry yeast packet on top of the beer and it somehow still did the job just fine without a yeast starter. I honestly thought of just throwing these really old ingredients away because I didn't expect them to still be any good after all of these passing years, but now I'm very glad that I went ahead and made this beer anyway. If anyone else ever has to make this decision again in the future, just go ahead and brew it, all you have to lose is a small amount of your time. Like in my specific scenario, everything may work out really well in the end.

 

[kh54s10]

Congrats on the beer!

The dry yeast working, the Dry extract being OK and losing hop presence doesn't surprise me. The liquid malt extract does somewhat. Dry yeasts last far longer than people give credit and can withstand uneven temperatures in storage. I probably would have supplemented with some additional hops.

 

[Positronic_Matrix]

I left two all-grain brew kits in my garage for several years. My garage is not climate controlled (10-40 °C) and one of the bags in the kits was left partially open. I read online that one should chew the grain to see if it is still viable. Initially, as it’s chewed, the grain tastes unpleasant, however as it mixes with saliva, the sweetness emerges. The closed bag tasted old and funky, so I tossed it. The slightly open bag was viable, I brewed it, and it’s currently being cold crashed. I hope to taste it this weekend.

I’ll let you know how it goes!