Category: Tips

How to make an old beer taste better

Rush Hour Breakfast Stout poured into a glass and pictured next to some sea salt

Last night all I had around to drink was old beer that I hadn’t bothered drain-pouring yet. This made me question how to make these old beers taste better. What can be done?

I filtered the results and brought the best to you. 

Turns out, you will need a French press. I don’t have one so I say you can just kind of mix in the things some other way – but you’ll probably get better results using a French press (something I now am adding to my wish list).

There are two main ideas to bring new life to your old beer, but I want to quickly list all of the best ones here before we get into detail:

  • Mixing the beer with citrus or coffee in a French Press.
  • Adding bitters to your beer.
  • Adding/mixing salt in.
  • Adding margarita mix or making a Michelada.

Okay, so, the most serious of the beer re-fresh ideas is using a French press. But what do you press with your beer? Try these:

  • Remove the zest of a grapefruit (orange or lime could work too). Take that zest and half a grapefruit (with the peel removed) and put them through a French press. Take that and put it on the top of your beer (I obviously don’t know how French presses work). Gives your beer a fresh citrus vibe that overtakes the cardboard. Good for Pales and IPAs or any beer that can take on citrus.
  • Take cocoa nibs and put them through the French press process with your beer. Good for tart beers.
  • Take freshly ground coffee and put your beer through the French press process. Works best on Stouts but I think it would add something to most styles.
  • Slice half a mango, and use the French press process. Good for West Coast IPAs.
  • For Lager and Ambers it doesn’t matter, they already wack and there is no helping them…ZING!🤣

Not every idea for brightening your beer involves a French press. Another great (and easier) idea to try is adding a couple of drops of a Bitter. Let’s listen to Cara tell us about bitters and think about which ones would be good for the style of beer we want to taste fresh again:

So yeah, now I gotta get a French press – and never use it for coffee. Speaking of, here is a list of equipment and other items that would help you have a good beer freshening system:

Related reading:

If you have better tips for freshening your old beer, leave it for us in the comments.

How To Drink Good Beer While Living in the Suburbs [part one]

Having Couch Beers is a great suburbs drinking pastime.

I don’t like to admit I live in the suburbs. While I am, in fact, in the middle of the city, it is still the suburbs. It’s much cooler to be in “the city” or whatever.

Main drawback: I don’t live downtown next to a cool brewery.

Hell, I don’t even live by an industrial park where new breweries seem to live.

There is a daycare on my block along with a State Farm Insurance office and a notary. Not exactly party central – except the days when I play a drinking game or bust out a beer garden style toy in the backyard.

Boring suburbs or not, that doesn’t mean you or I can’t have a good time with a nice beer in our neighborhoods. We just have to plan.

I have some initial thoughts that popped in my head to help you drink good beer while living in the suburbs:

  • Beer runs. Stop off at a brewery at some point in your week. Load up as much as your budget allows because who knows when you’ll make it back down here.
  • Ship it good. The Pandemic did at least one good thing and loosened up the beer shipping restrictions. Many states allow you to get beer shipped to your house directly from the brewery – as long as you’re still in the same state as the shipper.
  • A solid grocery store. If you are lucky enough, you have a grocery store with a decent Craft selection. This is the one thing I am lucky to have (although it is two blocks away [sighs in beer nerd]).

I will be honest with you, the main thing I do is get beer from a nearby grocery store. It is the most boring of ways for a beer geek to get their beer, and I do it often. My street cred fades day by day.

Today I went to my only nearby bottle shop/beer bar. That is something, anyway. At 3:30 in the afternoon, it was pretty packed with all sorts of people. grabbed my five overpriced cans and left without even so much as having a taster.

You see, if I have one, then I want more and I can’t do that again. People expect me to be at home most of the time, so I can’t trust myself to start up.

Tangent Warning! You have to be careful with your suburban drinking as a parent. Parents from your kid’s school are everywhere!

Yeah ‘cause, you think you’re safe at your neighborhood Mexican restaurant bar gettin’ stupid, but unknown to you little Tommy’s mom for the PTA was sittin’ in the corner the whole time watching you throw back Modelos (because it is the only drinkable beer this place has) and can’t wait to tell everyone at the next meeting how obnoxious you are and (worse) your taste in beer sticks!

[not that that has happened to me or anything]

There is a lot to unpack in this beer geek sub-genre. Definitely more to figure out on how to drink good beer while living in the suburbs. I’ll dig deeper in future post and on my newsletter for sure.

-Mikey

Can You Edit Your Check-in Location On Untappd?

Beer on the bar in the Floodcraft taproom inside Whole Foods Santa Clara
Forgive the blurry Half Acre beer, I want you to look at the Untappd board. I messed this check-in up, but I learned how to fix it

Can You Edit Your Location After Posting On Untappd?

Yes. You can totally edit your location after you check-in on Untappd and change it to the right one.

I recently used Untapped (tired as I am at taking pictures of my beer) to check-in a beer at Whole Foods.

I know, weird right? Yes, this particular Whole Foods is one of the ones that have a taproom too, so it was totally cool and legit that I was drinking beers inside a grocery store.

Anyway, I check my beer into Untappd, and they have a live board so I am waiting to see my stupid ass face pop up at the bottom of the screen. And then… nothing. The screen gave me nothing.

I made sure to use the venue both on location and purchase but I still was not coming up on the board.

Turns out that this place has multiple location options for checking in and chose the wrong one. There was:

  • Whole Foods Market – Santa Clara
  • Floodcraft (the actual name of the taproom)

After some research, I figured out the right one. For some reason it turned out to be “Whole Foods Market – Santa Clara” which I thought is weird. It should have been “Floodcraft” which is the one I checked in. Nope. I never came up on the board.

But it’s too late, right? I already checked in.

Nope. It’s NOT too late.

How To Edit A Check-in On Untappd

  • Pull up the post/check-in that needs correcting and click on it. You should have “Check-in Detail” at the top of the screen now.
  • Click the three dots at the top right.
  • You should have an option of “edit”, so click that.
  • Under “Location” find the proper location you want to change to and do the same for “purchased location”.
  • Save it. Now your check-in should show up as you wanted it to.

It may take a minute before you see your check-in displayed on the board. Also, MAKE SURE to check-in the place you purchased the beer in “location” AND “purchased location”, otherwise it might not get up on the board.

Because sweeping the board is sometimes the only interesting thing to do in a taproom.

P.S. I have a guide to Untappd that you can have for nothin’

How To Cleanse Your Palate For Beer Tasting

Premium crackers, Daisy Cutter Pale, Pure Project hazy, Moose Drool Brown Ale
Crackers & beer: it’s a thing

You’re having a flight of beers, or you are at a beer festival, or bottle share, maybe you do your drinking from the kitchen table, or are busy sweeping an Untappd board.

Whatever the hell it is, you’re going through a lot of beers.

But you want to taste the next beer as genuine as you can. The cleanest way. I am here to try and help.

These are MY real-world picks, not generic trash results I got off the Internet.

How to cleanse your palate between beers

  • Crackers. Unsalted crackers are the best but salted still work.
  • Chips. This works for when you are out in the field drinking. Most places don’t have crsckers but they have chips.
  • Nuts. Mostly a tip for when you are in a bar or at home. Not that practical anywhere else.
  • Water. Super boring option and not the best way to reset your palate, but usually there is some around and you should be drinking some anyway.
  • Your hand. What the hell!? Your hand!? Yes. Give your hand a good lick. Taste that hand – you know where it has been, it’s fine. Almost give it a hickey even. This is the best option when there is nothing around and by the way, I do it often.
  • A different style. If you are stringing a bunch of IPAs together it’s a good idea to break it up with a Stout or Brown or something. You would be surprised how improved a hoppy beer can be, drinking one after an opposite style.

Again, these are all ones I do myself. If there is science behind this, it’s unintentional.

Resetting your palate before a different beer is something I highly recommend though.

Non-beer geeks (and even some actual beer geeks) might scoff at you. Let them. Be sad for them. They just don’t know. But now you do.

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