I was just tidying up my garage and I came across an Ale Pail that has been buried for a while.  I forgot for a long time that I had a batch of Apfelwein going in it.  If I remember right I started that batch about two years ago.  

The airlock had long since dried out, there are fossilized fruit flies in the bottom of the airlock, and I figured I probably had about five gallons of moldy apple cider vinegar to pour down the drain.  I popped the top to do just that and the batch looks like clear amber and smells like apple brandy.  Now I feel like I have a conundrum.

I know next to nothing about homebrewing.  This batch was my first and only attempt and I obviously didn't even keep track of it.  I want to bottle it and try it, but I don't want to go blind from doing something ignorant.  What do you think?  Is this safe to drink?  Is the smell test sufficient?  Is there some other test I can easily/cheaply do?  Or is this obviously a bad idea and I should just dump the whole batch?

I wouldn't trust it.  Risk vs reward is kind of lopsided.

I'd dump any beer that was that old, to be fair.

Apfelwine is not beer. It's more along the lines of a wine.

I'd guess that it's probably no good, but it can't hurt tasting a sip. It won't have methanol (the alcohol that blinds you) unless some seriously wonky stuff happened to that. It may be infected, have bad flavors from yeast autolysis, or be oxidized though.

I would give it a taste. The amount of alcohol in Apfelwine would keep anything that would kill you at bay. It may have turned to vinegar but then you have homemade apple cider vinegar. Win win.

Well, I went ahead and tried it.  It tasted like very low-quality wine.  I think it was still "good" in the sense that you could drink without any special adverse health effects.  The local homeless would have probably loved to take it off my hands, but it wasn't worth saving, so down the drain it went.

Thats for the best then. Drinkable is fine sometimes but two year old apple wine that is "meh" is not worth keeping.

Now, if it had been a real grape wine like a cab sauv or something, two years would have been awesome for it.

At least you have a free fermentor to fill (after a bunch of cleaning and sanitizing)

Don't forget those buckets let loads of oxygen in thru the plastic (over time, anyway)--it may have been fine in room temp airlocked carboy, but unsealed bucket in an Indiana garage with open airlock? ooo boy...OP should be proud its still somewhat drinkable instead of vinegar/sherry.

I honestly wonder how much of that notion is truth and how much is myth.  I've never done a long aging beer so I don't know from experience.  Most of my beers are sessionable beers so my aging amounts to 1 month or so.  Sometimes when I'm lazy they sit for 2 months.  Never had a problem with that.



 

Yeah, I don't know if anyone has done a side by side with a DO meter, but that would be a good idea...

It's true and no myth.  Buckets are oxygen permeable.  I accidentally tested this.  I had brewed a triple for my local homebrew clubs December competition and due to the birth of my child life got in the way and it ended up in bucket way longer than I intended, 6 months.  Tasted terrible, oxidized cardboard taste and aged oxidation (sherry like) galore...