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Published online 2 June 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.869
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Beer gets fresh approach
The search is on to stop the chemicals that make a brew taste bad.
For connoisseurs of fine beers, there is little more highly prized than a crisp, brewery-fresh flavour. And there is nothing worse than a beer that has gone stale or sickeningly sweet from being stored too long on the shelf.
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seems like keeping beer cool and maybe out of bright light would work well too. wonder what happens with natural beers [live yeast in bottle].
seems like keeping beer cool and maybe out of bright light would work well too. wonder what happens with natural beers [live yeast in bottle]. Answer: freshness is preserved forever! That is because the live yeasts reduce all of those dicarbonyls that Adriana et al talk about in their paper Rafael Rangel-Aldao
in my experience natural beers have less shelf life than commercial beers. My home brewed beer (with live yeast in the bottle) only last 6 months or less.
Some of my homebrews were still improving when I had the last bottle at 2+ years and I usually saved most of each batch beyond six months. The gracefulness of aging depends on environmental conditions, the style of the beer and on obsessive sanitation prior to bottling. Most of the beers I prefer benefit from that aging. Maybe the researchers will turn their attention to wine and find a way to stop its aging process too. It would be an abomination for a fine Bordeaux, but might appeal to the producers of jug wines and Beaujolais Nouveau.