My first storage/aging experiment.

I was curious about whether I should be storing my ales at room temp or in the fridge post carbonation. I feel like this will yield different results depending on style, but I recently brewed an ESB and put 3 in the fridge about 3 weeks post bottle priming and let the rest sit at room temp. After about 3 weeks I chilled one of the room temp ones for a couple days  and did a side by side. WOW, two DIFFERENT beers. The refrigerated one still had a bit, albeit small amount of green flavor. Still quite good. But the room temp had bloomed into a really great beer. It had a bigger more complex malt flavor, better head retention, and was overall a more flavorful beer than the other. The refrigerated one was good, but was a bit one dimensional and sort of bland. I’m seeing that the delicate balance that is brewing extends beyond the brewing process into cellaring. I’m going to be taking a lot more tasting notes from now on. I was curious if anyone else has any personal experiences regarding how their beer develops over time.

Before purchasing my current house we lived in apartments that tended to be quite warm in the summers. I noticed that my beers from the apartment which were aged at about 72F+ tended to have a short shelf life, more likely to be gushers, and fruity tasting. My current house has a basement with a temp around 66-68 which results in a beer similar to how you described your room aged beer. I’ve never compared a refrigeratored beer to a room age beer but that may be the next experiment.

If you store them cold they will oxidize and change more slowly.  If you store them at room temp they will change quicker.  So for a barleywine I would recommend aging at room temp.  For a light lager I would age cold. etc… If you want (slight) oxidation and flavor development I would age room temp.  I have to age everything at room temp because I can’t fit 35 kegs in my kegerator (2) lol.

Space is my Achilles heel as well :wink:

sounds like you need to purchase another fridge!

Haha for sure. Condo living though.