Every one loves fresh beer, but why?

If you are a craft beer lover, you will have heard of the phrase “fresh is best”, or perhaps even thrown it around yourself once or twice. I get the feeling that maybe we are at a point where this has just become a bit of a cliché in our industry and people just throw it around without really understanding why it is actually a pretty important element in getting the most out of your beer.

I recently shared a 60 Second Beer Review with the community on Ballast Point Sculpin IPA and mentioned that I wanted to try the beer at the brewery because it was a little bit old by the time it got to me. A friend of mine asked me what I meant by that, to which I replied “Thanks, you have just given me an idea for my next Beer Healer article!”

So here we go…

In doing some research to help explain the Fresh is Best mantra in a clear and concise manner, I thought I would reach out to some contacts within the industry to get their thoughts on why they consider fresh beer to be so important. I have littered some of their responses though this article for your reading pleasure.

I feel like drinking craft beer is a real education, much like red wine. When you get into it a bit you are learning about natural ingredients, how they interact together, and change during the brewing process when introduced to other ingredients and elements like yeast, heat oxygen and water.

A few years ago, Stone Brewing, trailblazers in the industry, released a series of highly hopped beers under the name “Enjoy By”. This did two things, gave beer drinkers some awesome beers to enjoy, and highlighted that beer is better served fresh.

By why? Well beer has a lot of enemies! I don’t mean enemies like the safe drinking lobbyists, or the do-gooders who think drinking beer is the devils game. No, I mean natural enemies that will over time affect how the beer tastes.

These enemies are:

Light

There is a light sensitive compound in hops, which are of course the major preservative in beer, and they need to be shielded from UV light. That’s why beer is packaged into amber glass, or even better, cans. If too much UV light gets to the beer, the light sensitive compound starts to break down and the beer is referred to as “light struck”. If you have ever tasted a light struck beer, you will know that horrible taste/aroma, referred to as “skunky”.

I remember we did some beer school at work and the brewer demonstrated how quickly a beer can become light struck, even in amber glass. I kid you not when I say we could taste the difference between the good and bad beers after only 20 minutes.

Oxygen

As beer ages, a whole bunch of “sciency stuff” (technical term) occurs within the molecules of the liquid. You’ve got alcohol and flavour compounds getting it on in some kind of beer infused love fest with the oxygen in the beer, and the result is that stale taste we all hate.

Yeah, my Grade 9 Chemistry Teacher, Peter Norton, would be 100% happy with my explanation of that complex chemical reaction. At the end of the day, as the beer ages and this reaction takes place, more and more of the off-flavours are produced and eventually the flavours and aromas that the brewers work so hard to produce are beaten into submissison by flavours resembling wet cardboard.

Heat

You need heat to get all the magic to happen in the brewing process, it’s where you add all the hops for those great aromatics and flavours. However, once the beer has been bottled, canned, or kegged…heat is the enemy. I am gonna keep it really simple here…heat accelerates chemical reactions, breaking down molecules into smaller ones and basically just makes the beer age faster.

Easy!

Father Time

No one can beat father time, not even beer. Basically, all of the above stuff that I have so scientifically detailed for you will get worse over time…simple as that.

So there is the sciency stuff behind why we should drink fresh beer. As I showed above, the craft beer community have started to use this idea as a sales tool to encourage drinkers to drink their local beers, as opposed to ones shipped in from overseas, or stored in humongous mega-beer warehouses. Their motives are pure, aren’t they???

I checked back in with my old mates at Lion to see if they had anything slick to share on the topic, and lo and behold they did! Check out the video below with one of the most recognised faces (and most mimicked voices within the craft team) in Aussie craft brewing, Chuck Hahn.

https://youtu.be/HNh_P7guj-E

Now you have digested all of that, here are my 5 tips for making sure you drink the best tasting beer possible:

Know your beer – read the label to find out what type of beer you are buying and where it was brewed, it will tell you a lot about what you can expect from the liquid inside. In general, malt driven darker ales are not as susceptible to the problems above because they don’t rely on hops for the flavour as much. Don’t get me wrong, they will still age and deteriorate, but not as quickly as a lighter and hoppier beer. Do The Math – Check out the “brewed on” or “best before” dates and work out if you are closer to the start or the end of the beers life span. Ideally, if it’s a really hop driven, aromatic beer, you would want to consume this inside the first month or two. Sometimes it’s not that easy (especially where I live), but avoid a beer that is getting on towards 4-5 months old. Buy from the fridge – It seems to be quite common these days for craft beer bottle shops to display “singles” in shelves on the shop floor. It’s much cheaper and easier that mucking around with fridges, but it isn’t as good for the beer. If your bottle shop is in an airconditioned shopping centre with no shop windows to let in light and heat in, it may not be too bad, but play it safe and just buy from the fridge. Can it – the best protection for packaged beer is cans, so if you have the choice between a bottled version and a canned version, always go cans! Go to your local brewery – Small craft breweries are popping up all over the country, and due to their smaller batch sizes they are always pumping fresh beer through their taps. Head on down and pick up a growler of their latest brew, you won’t be sorry, as this beer will most likely be only days or weeks old, as opposed to months!

So there you have it, a science lesson (of sorts), some expert comments and a few tips on how to make sure you beer drinker experience is the best it can be! At the end of the day, craft beer ain’t cheap, so make sure you are able to get the best beer possible…be fussy, ask questions, and buy quality

As usual, don’t forget to follow me on Twitter and Facebook for all the latest beer news, and check out my YoutTube channel or Instagram feed for more fun.

What did you think of my 60 Second Beer Reviews? I release a new one every Wednesday, my latest one is below.

Cheers to fresh beers!