Guide

How long does craft beer last?

Last reviewed: September 24, 2026

Unopened and kept cold, most craft beer tastes the way its brewer meant it to for three to six months after it was canned or bottled. Hop-forward beers sit at the short end of that. A handful of strong, dark and sour beers keep changing for years, sometimes for the better. Three things decide where a given beer lands: its style, its package, and how warm it has been since it left the brewery. The date on it is a flavour date.

Style by style: the windows breweries start from

Counted from the day the beer was packaged, these are the windows QR Beers uses for each style until a brewery sets its own. They are starting points, not lab results: a brewery that knows its beer can set a longer or shorter window, and a date printed on the can always wins.

Style	Days from packaging	Roughly
Hazy IPA, double IPA, session IPA	90	3 months
West Coast IPA, cold IPA, pale ale	120	4 months
Amber, red and brown ale	180	6 months
Pilsner, helles, kölsch	120	4 months
Vienna lager, cream ale	150	5 months
Märzen, schwarzbier	180	6 months
Bock, doppelbock, weizenbock	365	1 year
Hefeweizen	90	3 months
Witbier	120	4 months
Dry stout	180	6 months
Porter, oatmeal stout, milk stout	270	9 months
Imperial stout	730	2 years
Gose, Berliner weisse, fruited sour	180	6 months
Wild ale	730	2 years
Lambic	1,825	5 years
Saison, Belgian blonde	365	1 year
Dubbel, tripel	730	2 years
Quadrupel, barleywine, barrel-aged beer	1,095	3 years
Non-alcoholic beer	120	4 months

For comparison, Craft Beer & Brewing puts the shelf-life dates most breweries print at 60 to 120 days after packaging, depending on the style (Is This Beer Fresh?). That is the IPA and pale ale end of this table. The long windows belong to beers built to change slowly.

Want the answer for one can? Pick the style and type the date into the beer freshness calculator.

Why hoppy beers fade first

Hop aroma is the most fragile thing in a beer. The oils behind citrus, pine and tropical fruit start to oxidise and fade from the day of packaging, and warmth speeds them up. A hazy IPA is a different beer at day 20 than at day 90: the fruit softens, the bitterness turns rough, and malt and a sweet, papery note move to the front.

Breweries know this. In his test of a nationally distributed hazy IPA, Jeff Alworth describes 90 days as the target breweries work towards, and hazies as the style that struggles to reach it. Brewers quoted by VinePair give an IPA about three weeks at its brightest and up to three months before the hops mellow into malt and caramel.

Malt, alcohol and acidity do the opposite job. Strong, dark and sour beers change slowly, and some develop notes of dried fruit, sherry or leather that their brewers want. CraftBeer.com draws the line at strongly flavoured beers above about 7% ABV, while reminding readers that the vast majority of styles are meant to be enjoyed fresh.

Can, bottle, keg or growler

Cans

A can keeps out all light, which is why the Oxford Companion to Beer names cans and kegs as the best protection against it. What a can cannot tell you is how much oxygen got in when it was filled. That depends on the brewery's canning line, and it is one more reason the canned-on date matters.

Bottles

Light is a bottle's problem. When it reaches the hop compounds in beer it forms a sulphur compound, 3-methyl-2-butene-1-thiol, that smells like a skunk, and in full sun that takes seconds. Brown glass protects well against short exposure; green and clear glass offer little or none (Oxford Companion: lightstruck). Keep bottles in their box and out of the sun.

Kegs

Draught beer is meant to stay at about 3 °C (38 °F) from the brewery to the tap. The Brewers Association's Draught Beer Quality Manual notes that a keg on tap for more than 45 days may no longer taste the way its brewer intended, and unpasteurised draught has to stay cold the whole way.

Growlers and crowlers

A growler is the shortest window in beer. The same manual says a filled growler is best drunk within 24 to 72 hours of filling and finished within hours of opening; by the third day stale flavours are obvious. A crowler is sealed like a can but filled by hand at the counter, so ask the brewery how long they give theirs.

Once it is open

Open means today. Carbonation and aroma start leaving the moment the seal breaks, which is why the Brewers Association tells growler drinkers to finish within hours of opening. The same goes for a can or a bottle.

Fridge or shelf?

Heat is what ages beer and light is what skunks it (Oxford Companion: storage of beer). Two rules cover most of it:

Hoppy, light and low-alcohol beers go in the fridge and stay there. Every warm day takes something off a hazy IPA that the cold would have kept.
Beers you mean to age (imperial stout, barleywine, strong Belgian ales, lambic) want a dark, steady place at around 11 °C (52 °F), not the kitchen shelf next to the oven.

Store cans and bottles upright, away from windows, and never in a hot car. When you buy, buy from a cold shelf: a beer that spent a summer in a warm warehouse can taste older than its date says.

Canned-on date or best-by date?

Breweries print one of two dates, sometimes both:

Canned-on (also packaged-on or bottled-on): the day the beer went into the package. It tells you the beer's age, and you do the arithmetic.
Best-by (best before, enjoy by): the last day the brewery expects the beer to taste as intended. It is the brewery's own judgement of the window, and it outranks any rule of thumb, this table included.

In the United States, dating beer is the brewery's choice: the TTB describes freshness dating as a quality-control tool brewers use to keep stale beer off the shelf (TTB Ruling 2017-2). Some breweries print the date in code, as a day-of-year number or a lot code, and some print nothing at all.

On QR Beers every batch page resolves the window in the same order: a best-by the brewery printed, then the window the brewery set for that beer, then the style default above. The freshness page shows how breweries put that on the can with a batch code.

Frequently asked questions

Does beer expire?

Not the way milk does. The date on a beer is a flavour date: after it, the beer has moved on from what the brewery intended. The USDA describes “best if used by” dates in general the same way, as a mark of best flavour or quality rather than a purchase or safety date.

Is beer past its best-by date safe to drink?

The date is about flavour, not safety. Food agencies treat a best-before as a quality date: in the words of Spain's food agency, AESAN, a product past it may have lost flavour or texture but stays fit to consume, provided it was stored as directed and its package is not damaged. What you will notice in an old beer is flavour: faded hops, a papery or sherry-like note, less fizz. A leaking, bulging or badly dented can is a different matter; leave it.

Can I drink a beer that is a year old?

Depends what it is. A year-old IPA will taste tired, because most of the hop aroma that made it worth buying is gone. A year-old imperial stout, barleywine or lambic may be just getting interesting. Check its style in the table above or in the calculator.

Does beer last longer in the fridge?

Yes. Heat speeds up the reactions that make beer taste stale, and cold slows them down. A hoppy beer kept cold holds on to its aroma far longer than the same beer on a warm shelf.

Why does my beer taste skunky?

Light. When light reaches the hop compounds in beer it creates a sulphur compound that smells like a skunk, and in strong sunlight that takes seconds. Cans and kegs block it, brown glass slows it down, and green or clear glass barely helps.

How long does beer last once opened?

A few hours at its best. Carbonation and aroma start leaving the moment the seal breaks. The Brewers Association asks growler drinkers to finish a growler within hours of opening it, and the same holds for a can or a bottle.

Brew it? Put the answer on the can.

QR Beers gives every batch its own page with the canned-on date and an honest freshness verdict, one scan away from the drinker holding it. Free to start.

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