Store the Beer You Save Properly so It Doesn’t Spoil
Beer, like most other food and drink products, has an expiration date and a right and wrong way to store it. Where and how you choose to store your beer can make a huge difference to its taste when you finally open the bottle or can open it.
A quick answer to this question: Store your beer either in the refrigerator or in a cool, dark place like a closet or corner of your basement. The three enemies of beer are oxygen, heat and light. In general, keep your beer away from all three of these factors whenever possible.
Here’s a quick rundown of why:
Heat
There is a misconception that all beer needs to be refrigerated. While yes, if you are thirsty for it you probably want it to be cold, you don’t need to keep it in the refrigerator unless you do today.
You can keep your beer at room temperature for a week or two without doing any real harm. While this can probably last up to a month, once your beer starts to sit a lot longer, the taste will begin to change in ways you don’t like.
Ideally, beer should be stored between 35 and 45 degrees Fahrenheit. The warmer your storage, the faster the overall flavor will develop in it. And you never want to store beer above room temperature. A hot afternoon can quickly (and not tasty) change the flavor of your beer.
This means don’t leave beer in the trunk in the summer when you spend the day at the mall, and don’t move your beer storage area to a place in your home that gets a lot of sun. By the way about the sun …
Light
It’s the same with light. Exposure to sunlight (and fluorescent lamps), even for a short time, can drastically change its taste for the worse. Beer packaging helps with this (which is why your beer comes in dark bottles or cans), but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to keep it out of the sun’s line of sight.
Brown glass bottles are capable of blocking 98% of the sun’s harmful wavelengths. Green bottles only block 20% of the damaging rays and can skunk in 5 minutes or less, while clear bottles (obviously) block 0% of light and can skunk in just a few minutes in the sun.
Oxygen
We all probably learned in elementary school that if you leave a can of soda open overnight, it will lose some of its carbonation. Oxygen can get into beer not only after you just leave it open, when it is bottled or in cans. Yes, breweries use machines to help remove a lot of oxygen, but it will still be there.
The ingress of oxygen into beer can have many negative consequences. Namely, it can lead to the appearance in your beer of several “off-flavors”, off-flavors that the brewers did not plan and that you do not need. Stale beer aromas can include a waxy floor or mouthfeel, cardboard or paper aromas, and a muted hop flavor (for hopped beers).
Most breweries put an “expiration date” on the bottles so you know when the taste of the beer changes to the point where it is not intended. If your beer does not have a date, assume it will be good for three months after bottling. In the vast majority of cases, you will absolutely not want to drink beer older than 6 months.
When it comes to storing beer, there is no big tip here, other than making sure the beer doesn’t get lost in the back of the fridge and is out of date. Also, make sure the beer you are putting off does not have an expiration date. Over the years, I’ve had dozens of friends who have saved beer for years that was meant to be consumed immediately. Don’t be that guy and miss out on a great beer because you’ve waited too long to drink it.