How Long Is A Keg Good For Once It's Tapped?

Summer is suited for a cool Corona by the pool, but fall is keg season. Cooler weather brings legendary tailgates and Oktoberfest celebrations. It's all good fun — until your eyes are bigger than your alcohol tolerance.

If you're left with a half-full keg, will you have to pour good beer (and good money) down the drain? It depends. If you used a hand-held party pump, you're out of luck. They introduce oxygen to the keg, which affects both flavor and carbonation.

Pasteurized draft beer lasts up to 120 days, but in America, domestically brewed kegged beer is rarely pasteurized. Realistically, your keg may only last for 45-60 days — and that's from the date it's kegged, not when you buy it. The type of beer matters, too.

Pilsners and IPAs should be finished off quickly, but lagers and wheat beers will last longer. Stouts and porters can also stick around, but clumps of sediment can form in old stouts. Even clumpy beer is safe to drink, though.

The USDA doesn't provide guidelines for beer, but Neil Witte, one of the world's foremost beer experts, told that old beer won't hurt you. "Because of the alcohol content in beer, and the presence of hops — which have antimicrobial characteristics — there's not really any pathogen growth," Witte explained. How to keep a keg fresh Even before you tap the keg, do your best to keep it cool.

Beer — especially unpasteurized beer — spoils quickly at warm temperatures. While a pasteurized keg will do okay at room temperature, unpasteu.