Professor Charlie

Professor Charlie Bamforth has described the nine month Best Before dates applied to beers in England as ‘ridiculous’, a view which raises questions about the move to twelve month dates in Australia.

Professor Bamforth, who is the keynote speaker at the upcoming Australian Craft Brewers Conference, made the comments in a recent episode of the US-basedThe Session podcast.

In the podcast he cautioned that freshness is the biggest technical challenge facing any brewer, saying that the golden rule is that beer will age three times faster for every 10°C increase in temperature.

“In a room where the temperature was 20°C, a beer is going to last 3 months. But if you increase the temperature by ten degrees to 30°C, it’s one month. And if it’s 40°C, which it is in my garage in Davis in the middle of summer, it’s a week,” he said.

His comments have implications for brewers committing their beers to long distribution channels under Australian conditions, as well asbeing relevant torecent discussions around beer freshness and storage.

During the interview he recounted a recent study trip to an English brewery.

“We went to a brewery in the south of England – and they do put a Best Before date on beer in England, nine months is what they put on, which is ridiculous,” he said.

“There was beer in the warehouse of this brewery, and it was four months old before it had even been shipped out of the warehouse, and it wasn’t a refrigerated warehouse, so it’s stale.”

“People are kidding themselves if they think they are getting fresh product, they are not in some parts of the world.”

In the extensive and free-ranging discussionabout beer freshness, Professor Bamforth said that US industry leaders felt the problem was particularly acute with hoppy beers.

“I used to say the worst problem was with the gently flavoured beers, because they reveal the staleness more obviously,” he said.

“But people like Ken [Grossman] and Vinnie [Cilurzo] say, ‘we worry about our hoppy beers, because they are the most rapid ones to change.”

He said that brewers can take whatever control they like in the brewhouse, and that will help, but they will never be happy with the stability of their beer.

“Beer does change with time, any beer will change and deteriorate with time. There are a number of big enemies, but the major ones are oxygen and heat,” he advised.

“With the best will in the world, beer is going to age, it’s as simple as that. There is no magic bullet, there is nothing that [a brewer] can do in which will say, ‘if I do this, it’s never going to stale.”

“One of the main points I make in [his new book, Freshness: Practical Guides for Beer Quality], is that no matter what the beer is, the lower the oxygen level in the finished beer and the lower the temperature at which you store the beer, the fresher it will remain for longer.”

“If you haven’t invested in refrigerated distribution and if your packaging line is giving you crazy high levels of oxygen in the bottle, you’re wasting your time. Work from the back.”

“That’s where it’s all at. The first people to educate are the customers,” he advised.

Professor Bamforth is the keynote speaker at the upcoming Australian Craft Brewers Conference.

He will also be the special guest at a special Q&A with Professor Bamforth, which will be streamed live on our Facebook page. Brisbane readers can purchase tickets to the event and have a beer with him on 5 August 2017.