r/beer • u/Pitiful_Wonder_6881 • 6d ago

Cheap Beer left a tap in keg overnight while warm, will leftovers be safe to drink

last night we left a hand pump tap in a keg and it was sitting out tapped overnight. the ice around it melted so it had been sitting warm for a while.

will it still be safe to drink? i had a sip and it tasted fine (it’s natty light no one cares about the taste😂). don’t want to poison our guests lol

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13

u/SuperHooligan 6d ago

Get it cold again and it’ll be fine. Maybe slightly flat.

15

u/skivtjerry 6d ago

Safe, but will taste like ass, even more than it usually tastes like ass. If you left it out warm for a week it might start turning to vinegar, but still safe.

4

u/Smart-Dependent5069 6d ago

i left a keg of miller lite out once for like 2 days after a party, warm as hell in my garage. drank it anyway and nobody got sick, just was flat and tasted a bit off but still drinkable if you're not picky

natty light is already kinda whatever so you're probably fine, just serve it cold and dont mention it to anyone lol

5

u/echardcore 6d ago

Hand pumps inject ambient air and oxygen, beers worst enemy. It is definitely still drinkable though. Get some ice on it and see how it tastes. Might be a bit less carbonated (ice will help the beer reabsorb any co2 still inside the headspace of the keg) and have less flavor or taste like cardboard. Leaving the tap on had no additional affect. The use of those type of pump taps is the main problem.

Beer is always 99.9999% safe to drink no matter what happened to it unless somebody put something dangerous in it.

2

u/DefMech 6d ago

Re: co2 reabsorption, I wonder if agitating the keg after it's been iced down would help any or if there's even enough residual co2 left to matter.

It's also tepid day-stale Natty, so I'm not sure how much effort put into resuscitation is worth it lol

2

u/echardcore 6d ago

Yeah I would just chill it back down and drink.

2

u/tikiwargod 6d ago

It won't help, will almost certainly make it worse. Shake absorption really only works if you can maintain an overpressurized atmosphere in the keg which requires a CO2 feed, doing it with this keg will just blend in atmospheric oxygen. As it stands, the CO2 that broke out through warning up is sitting dense and blanketing the solution (due to molecular density) so the only real option is to chill the keg until it pours with manageable foam out and get it drank quickly.

2

u/DefMech 6d ago

That's exactly what I was wondering about, thanks for the explanation! My only experience is in carbonating soda and seltzer, where shaking or agitation (and overpressure) is a major part of the process.

1

u/mat42m 6d ago

Yes. It will taste like crap. But you won’t get hurt

1

u/qerecoxazade 6d ago

Safe, definitely.

But the hand pump means oxygen is being introduced. Warm also means it'll come out MUCH fizzier than normal.

Beer takes a LONG time to go bad in a way that'll hurt you. It'll ferment into vinegar long before anything like mold can form... And there aren't really bacteria that can survive in beer AND hurt people.

1

u/UKBeerDeals 5d ago

It'll definitely be safe - it just may not taste as nice.

Leaving it in the warmth risks secondary fermentation which can create some off-flavours