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Spoiled beer not only tastes bad, but can also seriously harm your digestion. Do not drink alcohol of dubious quality if you do not want health problems. It’s pretty easy to taste spoiled beer. If you remember a few signs, you can protect yourself from negative consequences.
Strong taste of alcohol
A good lager beer is slightly bitter and leaves no aftertaste. Dark beer is sweet. In its aftertaste, malt should be felt without pronounced bitterness. These are the rules I always follow when trying a new kind of drink.
Both light and dark beers should not have a pronounced alcohol flavor, with the exception of certain varieties with a significantly high ABV. If your favorite “Baltika 7” began to give off alcohol, I would recommend that you immediately throw it away.
Acid taste
If you take a sip and feel a pronounced acid or even sour rot on your tongue, pour the contents of the bottle or jar into the sink and buy something else.
Usually this taste comes from poor closure, which means that a lot of harmful microorganisms have accumulated in the beer.
I should add that there are varieties for which a pronounced sourness is normal, usually they are ales. In a word, always understand what exactly you are going to drink.
rubbery taste
This most likely indicates poor water quality. The drink could have been contaminated with wild yeast, or the hops in it could have been exposed to ultraviolet light. In this case, there will be a taste not of ordinary, but of burnt rubber.
Only chemical analysis can reveal the exact cause, but you are unlikely to be so inquisitive. So my advice is to just pour the beer down the sink.
grassy taste
The smell and taste of freshly cut grass may even seem pleasant to you, but in fact it indicates a terrible damage to the drink by mold.
It could start in poorly dried grain, hops, or malt extract that has been stored in high humidity conditions.
Once, out of ignorance, I drank half a bottle of such beer – it made me feel so sick that it is still unpleasant to remember.
metallic taste
Regardless of the container in which the drink is transported, you should not feel the taste of metal. It usually indicates that the wort has been in contact with metal objects. The reason may be water with a high iron content, as well as improperly stored grain.
This is not the most dangerous case. At your own peril and risk, you can drink such a drink, but I still would not recommend doing this.
Valerian flavor
Do not think that valerian somehow got into the beer. Such notes are typical of old or spoiled hops. Here, how lucky: you can get poisoned, or you can do without any problems with digestion.
Once, a friend of mine who makes homemade beer had an entire batch ruined because he didn’t check the quality of the hops. He did not dare to sell such a product. If you’re brewing your own beer, always carefully inspect your raw materials.
“Skunky” smell
You certainly don’t expect to smell a skunk when you open a bottle of hoppy, but sometimes it happens.
The reason for this is the excessive contact of the drink with light, so transparent bottles are most susceptible to this defect.
I most often notice this in inexpensive Czech and German varieties that come in green bottles. Drinking such beer is not dangerous, but you are still unlikely to do it.