Just wanted to ask if anyone had any experience with this. Hopefully I can post some updates on how this experiment turns out.
A friend of mine has to return a few kegs of beer they bought to serve at an event. They were going to pour out the leftover beer from the kegs before returning them tomorrow and offered me some before they did. The beer is a wheat beer from a local brewery and the tag on the keg says it was "bottled" on September 27th of this year. I decided to fill a bunch of my empty canning jars and vacuum seal them to remove the oxygen. As oxygen and UV light are two of the biggest contributors to beer going bad I will be storing them in a dark cool place as well. Before pouring the beer into the jars I got as much of the carbonation out as I could by pouring it from one container to another and scraping off the foam. I did this to prevent the carbonation bubbles from popping the sealed lids off. Despite this, a few of the lids continue to pop and come unsealed due to the carbonation off gassing.
My questions are:
1)Has anyone ever tried anything like this before or heard of someone trying this?
2)If they're vacuum sealed and in a dark place do I really need keep them refrigerated?
3)Are they going to continuously off gas and pop the seals?
4)Would storing them with rings on help keep them sealed? Even if the co2 fills the headspace, if the ring keeps the lid sealed no oxygen will get in (theoretically).
I'm going to put a few in the fridge and also keep a few in various other storage conditions to test them out. Any advise or experience is welcome!
by masooooon98
16 Comments
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Do you have any growlers? Or crowlers? They are glass or stainless steel bottles with a flip top/clasp style lid designed to hold carbonated beverages. It is generally best to store beer in this type or container in a fridge. It will not last forever and not nearly as long as it would in a can.
You would be better off buying a few cases of bottles and some caps from Amazon. While beer is usually acidic enough to deal with botulism toxin, that includes the carbonation.
I do not think you’ll have luck with the jars sealing and I also think if you did it could be unsafe at worst and a poor way to store it at best. Like it’s gonna get oxygenated and ruined.
Maybe head on over to r/firewater or r/prisonhooch for some ideas of what to do with it
Amatuer canner but professional brewer here. Idk what the point of saving this beer is exactly. Its been oxidized enough when filling the jars that it will rapidly go stale. Also, its decarbonated now. If you like stale, flat beer then you have it in bunches now. Regardless, nothing will grow in it that can make you sick. Possibly see some mold depending on your hygiene while filling. Does not need to be refrigerated, though it will stale faster at room temp (expect less than a week to be undrinkably stale refrigerated or not).
I was horrified that this was going to be some sort of reddit piss jar thing from the pic alone.
If it were really going to become undrinkably stale (and I’ll admit my standards for beer can be pretty low!) then I would try to distill it with my little stovetop still. That would pull the alcohol out of it and leave the rest, and I would have a much smaller quantity of moonshine, which can be used any way one would use tequila….for mixed drinks, for tinctures, or straight!
Put it in a soda stream to re-carbonate it.
It’s going to be foul, but as long as we’re “experimenting” here, may as well shoot for the moon.
ummm… what do you think you’ll be doing with this questionable beer?
I’m happy to know it’s not just me 😆 when it happens you suddenly learn empathy for all the sitcom dads from the 90s who had to cope with an exploding sink!
If I happened to luck into a bunch of free beer well on its way to stale town, I’d probably put it all in five gallon carboys and add some braggs unpasteurized vinegar to inoculate it with acetic acid bacteria (vinegar mother). Six weeks and you’d have a truckload of small-batch malt vinegar.
Canning jars are apparently not great for withstanding pressure from carbonation. I make kombucha and was keeping it in canning jars until others warned me the jars explode much easier than bottles (canning jars are built to withstand external pressure, not internal pressure).
Sometime just because you can can doesn’t mean you should can. These could explode.
Those are going to be flat and pretty gross. I understand not wanting to waste something, but sometimes, it’s just not worth it. I’d dump it down the drain.
Okay, this is a weird one, but I will say – your theory about the rings is probably good.
When I bottle mead and wine I often top it up with co2 to prevent oxidation over long tem storage. If these jars had all the air sucked out, any co2 that comes out of solution will just make a layer of inert gas over the beer, and since co2 is heavier than air it will actually do a little to protect it from any air left in the bottle.
I wouldn’t open them unless you’re planning on drinking them. Instead apply the rings, you might fe vacuum any of the jars that have lost their seal just to be careful.
Lastly, I’d say your time on this is unknown. You’re largely in uncharted waters here. I would make an effort to use these up, though if you want to do an experiment I might set aside 2 or 3 jars to let sit for six months and a year prior to opening, just to find out if beer keeps in these conditions.
You already oxidized the beer when you filled the cups, and especially when you poured it back of forth to remove the carbonation. You do you, but it’s already ruined. Best case now it’ll turn to vinegar, since acetobacteria is present everywhere, and will be happy now that you introduced oxygen. Worst case you’ll get sick from other microbes growing in an aerobic Environment with sugars present, however it’s less of a risk.
Why would you do this? Just why?