Re: old beer--why bother?

I'm sure I'll be corrected by someone on this list if I'm wrong, but I once
heard a homebrewer who worked for a poison-control center allege that there
are no pathogens that can survive in a canned batch of beer, and not likely
to be any in any commercially-bottled batches either.  Not to say someone
couldn't directly contaminate a home-brew bottle, but..........

I think he recounted this statement after the poison-control center he
worked with got a call  from some woman whose husband found a six-pack of
Pabst Blue Ribbon that was, at the minimum, seventeen years old, and he
claimed he was going to sit down and drink it all that night.  I think his
answer was an elaboration of the above, and I remember his specific last
words precisely:

"If the cans aren't bulging, leaking, rusty, covered with fertilizer, or
whatever, then it'd be perfectly safe to drink.  However, I'm going to save
him the trouble right now: it's gonna taste like seventeen-year-old Pabst
Blue Ribbon!"