Alcohol is a preservative :)

Lower strength beers will not benefit from preserving qualities of alcohol as much as beers who's ABV is in excess of 8 or 9%. These stronger beers can actually sit around for a year or more. Cheaper, weaker beers often don't fair that well for such long periods. Hops also serves as a preservative. That's where the IPA style originates. Overhopped ale was produced in the 18th and 19th centuries so it would remain fresh when transported to British military forces in India. I don't know of any chemical preservatives used in brewing beer. Some claim hangovers are caused by preservatives but I think it may be a drinker's particular reaction to other ingredients. For example, rice, which is used as an adjunct in some commercial beers.

hops "The Reinheitsgebot (help·info) (literally "cleanliness or purity law"), sometimes called the "German Beer Purity Law" or the "Bavarian Purity Law" in English, is a regulation that originated in the city of Ingolstadt in the duchy of Bavaria on April 23, 1516, although first put forward in 1487, concerning standards for the sale and composition of beer. Before its official repeal in 1987, it was the oldest food quality regulation in the world. The vast majority of German breweries continues to comply to this regulation and uses this in their marketing approach." "In the original text, the only ingredients that could be used in the production of beer were water, barley, and hops. The law also set the price of beer at 1-2 Pfennig per Maß. The Reinheitsgebot is no longer part of German law: it has been replaced by the Provisional German Beer Law (Vorläufiges Deutsches Biergesetz (Provisional German Beer-law of 1993)), which allows constituent components prohibited in the Reinheitsgebot, such as wheat malt and cane sugar, but which no longer allows unmalted barley. Note that no yeast was mentioned in the original text. It was not until the 1800s that Louis Pasteur discovered the role of microorganisms in the process of fermentation; therefore, yeast was not known to be an ingredient of beer. Brewers generally took some sediment from the previous fermentation and added it to the next, the sediment generally containing the necessary organisms to perform fermentation. If none were available, they would set up a number of vats, relying on natural yeast to inoculate the brew. Hops are added to beer to impart flavours but also act as a preservative, and their mention in the Reinheitsgebot meant to prevent inferior methods of preserving beer that had been used before the introduction of hops. Medieval brewers had used many problematic ingredients to preserve beers, including, for example, soot and fly agaric mushrooms. More commonly, other herbs had been used, such as stinging nettles. The penalty for making impure beer was also set in the Reinheitsgebot: a brewer using other ingredients for his beer could have questionable barrels confiscated with no compensation. German breweries are very proud of the Reinheitsgebot, and many (even brewers of wheat beer) claim to still abide by it. This is purely for marketing purposes; all modern commercial brewers in Germany add cultured yeast to the brew, and wheat beer contains wheat. Neither yeast nor wheat are allowable ingredients under the 1516 law." Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinheitsgebot Further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preservative "Alcohol is also used as a preservative for specimens." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol (but there is also alcohol free beer...)

Lets get pickled Lambchop! Drinks are on me!!!

There are in most of the beer people drink. There are all sorts of additives in there. But it is possible to get all natural beer, and many import beers don't have them by law. But in the USA there are no laws like that. You can test for some additives like foam stabilzers. Get two clean beer glasses, and into each put one drop of milk diluted 70-to-1 with water. Then pour Bud into one glass and Miller into the other. Unless the manufacturers have changed their formulas in the last couple weeks, the head on the Bud will die like a dog within two minutes (which it should--even a tiny trace of milk is deadly to beer foam), whereas the one on the Miller won't, indicating the presence of false drugs. For your information: Miller Lite contains propylene glycol alginate, water, barley malt, corn syrup, chemically modified hop extracts, yeast, amyloglucosidase, carbon dioxide, papain enzyme, liquid sugar, potassium metabisulfite, and Emka-malt,

Yes, in fact hops (one of the five main ingredients in beer) is a natural preservative. Back in the day (before hops was used in beer) beer was actual brewed using spices. This style of beer is what we now call Gruit. The addition of hops was historically intended as a preservative to keep beers from spoiling when fermenting. I am sure you have heard of the beer style IPA or Indian Pale Ale? Well, IPA was a beer than was ultra hopped (extra hops added) for transport on ships. The extra addition of hops helped the beer stay unspoiled for longer as the British transported their beer to India via ships.

Yes, hops and alcohol are preservatives. The real question is, does beer contain artificial preservatives? It seems the answer is yes. Thanks, Galeanda. My question is, Why? And why does commercial beer have a use by date? Sealed in bottles, it should keep almost indefinitely. The best beer I ever drank was home-made beer fifteen months old. It had improved immensely with age. Smooth as silk, and tasted great. I make beer all the time, and try not to drink any under six months old. Inwit: Yeast was known at least by implication long before science discovered it. As you say, ancient brewers and brewsters took a quantity of drub from the bottom of their fermenting vats and added it to their next brew, knowing that it would establish fermentation quickly and thus minimise chances the brew would spoil before it gained protection from infection by the fermentation process. The German beer laws were politically motivated, some say influenced by religious and health issues. Some of the gruit herbs used to flavour and preserve beer were poisonous — deadly nightshade was one. Brewing ale with gruit continued for a long time in Britain, before hops-only beer took over. Gruit could contain hops, or no hops, together with various other bittering, preserving and flavouring herbs and spices.

http://sabmiller.in/making_beer.html Beer brewing in india by second largest beer companly of world is popularly for its well known lager beer, malt beer, stout beer, mild beer and pale ale beer. Peroni, Fosters, knockout and Haywards are beer brands of sabmiller india.