Hot answers tagged storage
13
Keep out of the light
The cooler the better
Store upright
Carefully choose beers to store
Be patient
There are two major beer spoilers: light and oxygen.
There is not much you can do about O2 getting into the bottle except seal the cap with wax. I recommend this for very long term storage.
Lightstruck beers take on a "skunky" character - if you want to ...
12
I recently had my first bottle bomb (actually 2 side-by-side) after over 10 years of brewing. The fact that they were in a cardboard box helped.
But if I were you I'd immediately:
refrigerate all bottles, and
carefully open and re-cap each one.
Never mind about planning for it to be easier to clean up. Imagine one of those shards of glass finding its ...
10
In short, it depends.
The April 10th, 2008 episode of Basic Brewing Radio is all about glass and skunking.
How Fast?
Unprotected beer will rapidly skunk. I had a keg of blonde ale in the sun one summer afternoon. The beer in the three feet of tubing spoiled in less than a minute. The small volume of skunky beer was strong enough to ruin an entire pint. ...
10
The Wyeast liquid yeast can survive warmer temperatures for some time and still be viable. Although the longer they are kept above 40F the less viable they will become. The only way to know for sure is to activate the pack and see if it expands due to activity. I would advise you do this before you start brewing to confirm that you have active yeast to ...
9
I buy hops by the pound and store in the freezer between uses.
Remove as much air as you can. I seal in ziploc bags and squeeze the air out
Keep them in the freezer
Realize that hops will lose some bittering power over time. Good software can help you estimate the impact. If you them up in two to three months, the change will be minimal.
Buying in bulk ...
9
They probably used a bit of their glycogen reserves when they warmed up, but as long as they were cooled down again fairly quickly they should be fine. I am guessing you will be using a starter, since you are using a Propagator, so if they seem to have any problem in the starter, they may have used up too much of their stored reserves and you'll need to buy ...
8
Go to www.cwcrate.com - there you can get some pretty cool plastic beer cases.
They hold up really well too, I've been using mine for quite some time now and there no way they are going to fall apart. What's cool about them is that you can just take your case out in the yard, open it up and pour a bag of ice in and you're all set.
7
I'm not sure whether the vacuum seal is required, but they definitely need to be stored in the freezer. I had a few ounces of whole leaf hops leftover from a batch that I accidentally put back in the fridge rather than the freezer. When I went to take them out a few weeks later, they had liquefied into a brown, disgusting goo.
7
Short answer:
Your liquid yeast should have an expiration date. Most dry yeasts will as well. This means that the yeast within is only going to be reproducing and active for that long. Typically 3 months after shipped.
Long answer:
When yeast run out of food or are under other forms of stress, they will enter a sporulation phase. During this process, the ...
7
You'll want to keep the bottles within the yeast's active temperature for the first week or so after bottling in order to keep the yeast active for carbonation. Most likely, that means room temperature. After that, you can chill the beer for drinking or to extend the lifetime (not that there's any rush, we're talking on the order of months).
Definitely keep ...
7
The shelf life of a recipe kit varies based on what type of ingredients come in the kit.
Yeast- Liquid yeast should be used within 3 months of the production date for best results but can be viable for up to 6 months but a yeast starter is recommended for yeast that old. Dry yeast can be viable for up to 1 year if stored at room temp and even longer if ...
7
Cooler is better, but the old myth that says that if you go through warming and cooling cycles the beer is ruined is just not true. The warmer the beer gets the more that aging is accelerated, but it's the warmth, not the repeated warming and cooling, that does the damage. And "skunking" comes from exposure of isomerized hops to light. It has nothing to ...
7
Before I got kegs, I used to bottle with 1.5 liter PET soda bottles (the standard size in Norway.) The beer tasted fine, even after several months, and no hint of soda.
I used to soak them for 24-48 hours to remove the labels, then clean thoroughly with PBW or OxiClean. Then sanitize with StarSan.
After this, there is no odor from the bottles and, as far ...
7
CO2 is less readily absorbed by warm liquids. Therefore, CO2 in solution comes out of solution when you warm the beer.
Whenever it works for you. The warmer the beer is stored though, the sooner you should try to cool it back down. Warmer storage promotes faster aging. For me, the point where I want to start cooling it down again starts at about 80F.
...
6
I'm having a hard time seeing how overfilling would cause a bottle bomb. Usually you're talking maybe a half-oz or an oz of difference between under- and over- filled. And over-filling wouldn't cause that much extra pressure. If you have one bottle bomb, you should expect the whole batch to be at risk.
Moreover, just waiting for the "remaining week" of ...
5
Taste the grain to check. If it is not musty, moldy or stale, go for it. Leaving it unmilled is a big advantage.
Smell the hops. As hops age they lose their bittering power and may take on a cheesy flavor. A year is probably okay, but you won't get the same level of bitterness or flavor out of them versus fresh hops.
Continue to keep your ingredients in ...
5
Get a freezer on craigslist. Find one cheap. 50-300 bucks depending on size, the deal, and condition. I see them for 100-150$ for the huge ones all the time. I have a 20 cu ft stand up. It's the biggest one you can get. Buy a temp controller online, a brewshop, or at a beverage supply place (~50-60$), and set it to desired temp. I use 55ยบ, that's a good ...
5
Preservatives generally aren't a part of winemaking, at home or commercially. If you are referring to sulfites, these are added to kill the yeast to stop fermentation at a specific point, not to preserve the wine per se.
Most sulfites dissipate, break down, or precipitate out within about 24 hours after application. They are not preservatives because ...
5
If you're using a powdered sanitizer, like One Step, it doesn't respond well to storage. It's a percarbonate based sanitizer that depends on O2 to work. If you store a mixed solution long, the O2 bubbles out making it unreliable. If you use Iodophor, you can store it for a week or 2 until it loses its color. It you use StarSan and mix it with distilled ...
5
Warm storage tends to speed the aging process. I would suppose (but have no proof) that you could relate the average storage temp over the life of the bottle to be directly related to life of the beer prior to becoming stale.
This would be an interesting experiment overall. Store a beer at the same average temp for a period of a year, where one cycled ...
5
I keep the bottles in 24 bottle cases for my 12oz-ers. And I keep my 22's in a 12 bottle case that they get shipped in. You can get these at your local beer store as most beer is shipped in 6 pack holders in a larger box.
I had a bunch of 1L belgian style bottles that I kept in a rubbermaid bin. But I had to be honest with myself recently and I tossed ...
5
Untapped casks can be stored for extended periods of times as long and the bungs are secure and they are not leaking. If you would like to enjoy drinking the beer over an extended period of time you will have to use an aspirator valve in your system set up. What this does is keep a small amount of CO2 pressure in the head space so the beer is not exposed ...
5
The yeast settling out of the beer over time is a big help in clarifying the beer. If you leave them sitting on their side the yeast will settle there such that when you upright them in your fridge the some of the yeast will re-suspend and the beer will be cloudy. This adds a yeasty taste and also acts like a laxative.
If you must store horizontally it ...
5
Many people trade beer all the time.
It is legal, except via US Postal Service.
I think the laws around shipping via USPS are in flux, but without confirmation I'll suggest you stick to FedEx and UPS.
More info at:
http://www.reddit.com/r/beertrade/comments/atztu/trading_and_packaging_tips/
...
4
I froze a keg of Hefeweizen totally stiff. I had accidentally pulled the temp control probe out of the deep freezer that the kegs were in. The freezer ran at its "normal" freezing temps for maybe 2 days before I noticed it, so the keg was TOTALLY frozen as far as I could tell.
Good news: the beer was still delicious! I had decent head on the hefe, and its ...
4
From White Labs Yeast Storage and Maintenance:
As yeast sit in storage, they consume
their glycogen reserves. Glycogen
deprivation weakens their cell walls,
and makes them more susceptible to
rupture. Cold temperatures retard this
process, but you want to avoid
freezing yeast, as ice crystals will
also rupture cells. The ideal storage
...
4
The only thing I use potassium metabisulfite for in brewing is the dechlorination of my tap water.
I use k-meta in winemaking for several purposes:
To stop the naturally occurring wild yeast and bacteria on the grapes immediately after crushing. After sulfiting the must to ~40ppm, I let it rest for about a day before pitching my cultured yeast. This ...
4
Yes, the wavelengths generated by a standard incandescent fit within those that are known to "skunk" beer, a process that is a photochemical reaction that causes specific chemical bonds to change, resulting in flavenoids (flavors) that are generally distasteful. They emit about one third to one half of the intensity of sunlight in the <500 nm range that ...
4
Heat does not cause skunkiness. That's due to exposure to light. Heat will accelerate the staling process, producing oxidized flavors among other flaws. In general, a short period of time in the 80s will not fatally damage beer, but the higher the temp and the longer the time of exposure, the worse it gets.
4
I've brewed with 3 year old grain before and the results were mixed. Light beers weren't great, just tasted like stale grain, and they had a haze that didn't settle out completely, even after 6 months. The old grain worked best in darker beers, where you can get most of the flavor from some fresh speciality malt.
I had 200lb of grain to get through, but ...
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