How long can wine and various beers be kept?

[Harry Bloomfield]

I have just restarted wine making, 25 years since I last was involved and intend doing a batch of stout in the coming weeks, but how long can the various homemade's be kept for?

I have somewhere cool-ish most of the year to store my bottles and I will only be using kits. The wine will be in glass, sealed with Novatwist caps.

Beer (at least initially) will be in Coopers brown 500ml bottles - I have read 6 months, some say 12. Assuming I eventually use glass, how long would they keep?

 

[MrRook]

It depends on a lot of things : how strong, how hoppy, how careful you were with sanitizing.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

Yes I know there are a lot of variables, but I'm just looking for some general ideas.

 

[Graz]

I've kept home brew beers in glass bottles for ~2 years. Normally nothing lasts that long at home but these were Brewferm Belgian beers, the Christmas and Abdij kits both of which benefit from long ageing.

I'd say:

Hoppy IPAs and Pale Ales - ready to drink after about 3 weeks in the bottle, consume with in 6 months otherwise they'll start to degrade but won't go off for quite a while after that.
Ales - Coming good around 6 weeks, good to keep for a year or more if stronger.
Strong dark ales, porters, stouts etc. - Would be fine at 6 weeks, but good for 2 years or more.

As for wine, better to drink white sooner but then I'm currently finishing up some stuff that's getting on for two years old and it's still good. Reds will keep much longer in the right conditions and should still be fine in 3-5 years but unless you have proper cellar type conditions wouldn't keep them much beyond that.

Basically the stronger stuff is the longer it will keep for as alcohol is a pretty good preservative!

 

[DavidDetroit]

My experience with just strong beers in glass is only 1.5 years and they only improved. As said above, I'm sure 2 would be fine or maybe better.

 

[MyQul]

The longest I 've kept HB is 1 year. It was a bottle of 3.7% Bitter made with kviek. It tasted lovely after a years condioning