We’ve all done it. You bring good beer to a party or you have good beer at yours. You want everyone to enjoy themselves and maybe even discover a beer they have not tried.
BUT!
You have beers in that ice-chest exclusively for you. Ones you only want to drink. You got to bury them or come up with a plan.
Let’s brainstorm some ideas. Even if some are obvious.
Cooler With a Hidden Compartment
I really wanted to find a magic cooler that has a false bottom that one could easily get to and not draw attention. That does not seem to exsist.
But there is one dude that (if you’re good with working with wood) shows you how to make a small hidden compartment in the lid of an ice-chest:
Yeah, I’m not going through all that. Plus, it is not practical enough to keep something as big as beer cans or bottles and hold something that would keep that false top cold. Moving on.
Hidden Beer Cooler
Now we’re going to try and flat out hide the cooler. Put it in an odd spot that does not draw attention to where you’re going, but also can be accesses by you without hassle.
IN THE BEDROOM. This would be weird to do at somebody else’s place, but totally possible at your own.
THE TOILET TANK. I suppose you could fashion some sort of cooler that would go inside the tank of the main toilet. Maybe big enough for some cans but still let the toilets flusher still work probably. This is hardcore and would require ingenuity I don’t have.
COOLER IN THE BUSHES. The grassy knol where there was a second cooler. Hide it in the trees, dude. “Why does Mikey keep going over into the bushes?” “Yeah, and now he somehow has a new beer?”
WITH THE PURSES. Get one of them cooler bags, one that looks like maybe it’s a mom purse. Leave it amongst the other “bags” and hopefully nobody will see you checking the coat and bags area every 20 minutes.
BEER CLOSET. If you are lucky enough to have a walk-in closet, you now have a Beer Closet. This may require you to sneak away and do some chugging.
So I assume if you’re ready this weird and nerdy beer blog, you have probably been to a beer venue that has an Untappd Board. If you haven’t seen one, it is an electronic board above the bar, that you can see yourself displayed at the bottom of the board, checking into the beer you’re drinking at the venue.
If there are not many people checking-in while you’re there, you can have your name take up all the check-ins being displayed. You can “Sweep The Board!”
There it is. That’s the term we are calling it. Sweep The Board.
This was birthed on the Perfect Pour podcast, but we have been calling it different things. “Run the board”, “Own the Board”, “Board Sweep”.
I wanted to tighten it up and make a universal term that we can all start using, making it easier to start trending and try and make this become a thing among users of Untappd. Sweep The Board.
Here is what it looks like in real life from famous L.A. Beer Geek, ChewYourBeer:
See how Chew is kind of unsure of what to call it? (Although “Board Control” sounds kinda cool.)
Please feel free to laugh at my nerdness of all this because it probably deserves to be laughed at, but I think starting a beer trend is pretty damn cool so laugh it up, Fuzzball.
Just remember to use #SweepThe Board when you’re done laughing.
Since we’re here and in case ya didn’t know: Untappd User Name: dorktown (or search for Mikey Top Pour).
Hell yes, it can go bad. Sometimes it’s bad as soon as it’s packaged, am I right?! Sorry, never mind the jokes, does beer expire? Yes beer can go bad or expire or both.
But only bad in the sense that it tastes awful, not bad like, you might die if you drink it. It’s the infected bottles you have to worry about and even then I would not worry too much.
Old beer just tastes bad. If you take a sip and it’s awful you can move on rather quickly and not be in any kind of trouble.
How do you know when beer goes bad?
Some things to look for, obvious or not
Check the date. Unfortunately not all beer as an expiration date or a packaged date. If it has a date and it’s a hoppy beer, you might as well put it back and move on if the date is more than three months old.
Look at the color. If it’s cloudy and it’s not really supposed to be a hazy beer, something ain’t right.
Is it sealed? Once in a while a bottle is not sealed right and there might be a little junk around the camp. Also, if you open it up and there is no “pachsst” sound or no carbonation leaving, probably not a good thing.
What is the shelf life of beer?
This depends on the style.
IPAs and Pales are getting old as soon as they are put into a can. Ideally they are best on day one. Realistically, you have a good three month window on hoppy beers – maybe a little longer if it is one that is high in alcohol.
Lager and Pilsners last longer. To me, they are already kinda skunked but that’s just personal preference. Unless it’s a hoppy lager, it does not make much difference as far as I am concerned. But fresh is always best.
Stouts and Porters are good ones to cellar if they are high in alcohol and are low in adjuncts like, say, coffee. So drinking an old stout is totally cool and even encouraged.
Sours can be better the older they get. They can also get worse. Drink it and take some notes in your beer drinking notebook.
Is it safe to drink after the expiration date?
Yes, mostly. Being there is alcohol involved, most of the bad stuff that could develop in old liquid, won’t get a chance to live. So yeah, it’s pretty safe to drink.
Really, all you’re risking is a possible slightly rough day tomorrow on your bathroom break. Totally worth it, I say. Heck, a really good hazy beer can mess up your system much more than an old beer can.
If your beer is infected, that’s another thing. If you want to be able to tell exactly what the infection is, you can read up on it at the Thrillist.
How to read beer expiration dates
If you’re lucky enough to be holding a beer with an actual date printed on it, you’re cool and we can figure this out.
Date it was packaged (when it was put in a bottle or can).
Best buy date. (The date the brewery wants you to drink it buy)
Julian date. Some breweries use this and I don’t have the brain power to explain it to you here. But Sciencing knows how to calculate the Julian date so I will leave it to them.
The best for us, the drinker, is the “born on” or packaged date because it lets YOU decided what is the best date to drink it.
Also good when the brewery markets the actual beer to be drank by a certain date like Stone does with its Enjoy By series:
Tip to brewers: I love when breweries get cute with the stamp/date on the bottom of their cans. But not when I cannot figure out if the date is a packaged date or a drink-by date.
Drinking expired beer
It is tough to throw out or “drain pour” beer. I know. I have a Pizza Port “Swami” IPA in the fridge that is over a year old and I can’t seem to let go of it. I really want to figure out how I can drink old IPAs and still enjoy them.
Like, be so good at tasting old beer that I can actually enjoy it. Maybe the Beer Temple has found a way to do that:
It’s something to try anyway. There are days I have used a gas credit card to buy beer so I can be desperate enough to drink old beer.
So, Does Beer Expire? Yes and No
Beer does expire. But it’s different from going bad and being infected. If it’s simply old, it’s safe to drink. You just might have to work at it to make it enjoyable.
I like to get deep into the weeds (or wort) with little nerdy beer questions on this blog. This one is no exception and it’s a really dumb question but one that has been bugging me for some time and I need to deal with it.
Is it Mixed Pack or Variety Pack?
When a brewery distributes and is big enough, they can start making mixed packs or variety packs. But which is it? This is super important guys! {insert your eye-roll here} I need to figure this out for some reason.
Let’s break down some of the heavyweights in Craft Beer and see what they call their packs. Maybe we can filter out some stuff.
Sierra Nevada Brewing:
Both. They use both. There is a 4-Way IPA pack of their own IPAs called a VARIETY pack. But most of their standard packs are called MIXED.
Modern Times:
Mixed. This one is maybe my favorite because it has the fun little window that shows you the rotating can from their MIXED pack.
New Belgium:
Sampler. Variety. Colab. They seem to use all terms BUT mixed.
Ska Brewing. They call theirs a Mixed Up Variety Pack. Woah. Mindblow. They use both. Now I’m thoroughly confused.
Beers Of The World: This was the original for me. So exotic these packs we would get (still I guess) from Cost Plus World Market. But they don’t call it mixed or variety.
Oscar Blues: “Cannundrum” is called a Variety Pack. But get this: their CANarchy pack is called a MiXED pack.
Maybe we have stumbled onto something here. The CANundrum is a pack with all Oscar Blues beers. The CANarchy is a pack that features beer from different breweries.
Variety Pack: Same brewery.
Mixed Pack: Different breweries.
Wait, what am I saying? I have already cited, in this post, examples of mixed packs with beers from the same brewery. Dummy,
It all comes clear. Or is it as clear as a juicy hazy IPA?
Gail Zack from Zack’s Brewing came up with a good suggestion the other day. Maybe it’s Variety when it’s different styles and mixed when it’s the same style.
Oh ok, this sounds right. Except, Sierra Nevada calls it a mixed pack whether its all IPAs OR the styles are mixed up. DAMMIT! So close.
Then I thought maybe the answer lies outside of beer. What about the big bags of the little bags of chips? The ones you get for your packed lunch or soccer snacks. Well a lot of them are called variety packs.
Then Frito Lay, as if to screw with me, calls them Mix Variety Packs.
Solved not solved.
Mixed or variety? There is no definitive rule. Guess we are left to wander around calling one thing two things.
This just in: Some people call them Sampler Packs. Oh fuck.
Cheers!
-Mikey
Before you go
If you would like some further talk on the subject, we discuss this topic in a VARIETY of ways on The Perfect Pour podcast, in particular during episode #277 “Have We Reached Peak Haze?”
Craft beer changes so much, at least when it comes to can releases. It’s easy for a beer to get released and forgotten about very quickly. Even though, tons of work went into that beer, including the label art.
So I’m starting a series on the blog, remembering cool label art I have come across, with maybe a few thrown in that I have not acquired yet but would love to have a chance to “label buy” someday – labels I’m Looking Out For, if ya will.
Please enjoy the first round of a brief collection of recent labels I have come across and love.
From Tioga Sequoia Brewing “Hop Fuzz”, Brut style IPA:
This one I actually drank. It’s an excellent Brut IPA and a nice refreshing change from the hoppier stuff I was having that night. A good pallet cleanser.
Tioga is out of Fresno and can be found all across Central California. But “Hop Fuzz” may be limited to what the brewery has on-hand; It’s a trader. Continue reading “Beer Art: “Label Buy: Batch 1””
