I have only made beer from kits for several years, but am going to start with all grain and then put it into 5 gals casks. My question is I bottled some beer in 7/2016, but lost it in a refrigerator. I found it and it is some of the best. That was in the bottles, but how does it age in a stainless steel cask?
Ed Meyer
southern Oregon coast
You’ll continue to get secondary fermentation from any microbes that reside in the beer, but you won’t get any microbial character from the wood nor any wood/char flavor you might get depending upon the barrel. You also won’t have beer evaporating, so your volume should be quite similar to what went in. I would guess the aging would be very similar to your glass bottle aging, though depending upon how you fill it you might get more oxidation.
Another thing that will be a factor is temperature. Your bottles in the fridge will have matured more slowly than a container at cellaring or room temperature. In general, the warmer the beer is, the faster it will age.
I agreed with Koch, if you have a closed vessel, your aging time should be similar to what it is in a bottle. I age mead in kegs all the time. You just want to make sure to have as little head space as possible and/or purge the oxygen if you can. I usually fill the keg, purge the O2, and put it in the basement to let time do its thing.