Just finished the last bottle from one of my batches.
Checked the calendar, batch was started 16 weeks ago.
I find the beers over time meld/blend/mellow and become more soft/pleasant.
For those of you out there that do all-grain, and bottle.
Considering getting more bottles to bottle-age brews.
My brews are about 5% ABV.
What’s the oldest from your own home brew you have tasted ?
Is there a sweet spot ?
Thanks
I don’t think there’s any single answer. I won a large comp for a bottle of barleywine that was 5 1/2 years old. OTOH, I like IPA in the first couple weeks. Pilsner after maybe a month or so. In general, I am not a fan of much age on most beers.
Had a Barleywine of mine at 10 years - it was remarkably decent. It was better at the 5 year point.
Had a mead at 13 years that was sublime.
Had a Dubbel at an unknown age (14?). That was close to terrible.
My neighbor made an Old Ale for his grandson at his birth, intending to have a bottle each year on his Grandson’s birthday with his son and then whatever is left in the batch at his Grandson’s 21 st birthday will be his to try. He’s about 7 now.
And I just recalled…the oldest beer I’ve ever had was a 74 year old bottle of Ballantine Burton Ale. Tasted kinda like watered down Scotch.
I make a Barleywine every year and bottle condition it. I save some every year, so I can do a vertical tasting in the winter. I usually have some going back 7 years and they still taste fine. My friend came over this summer and brought over a Barleywine that I gave him 10 years ago. It obviously had oxidation, but was still drinkable and enjoyable. I have a Belgian Dark Strong in bottles that is around a year old and it is delicious. I love bottle conditioning big beers and tasting them as they age over the years. It is one of my favorite parts of this hobby.
The oldest bottle I’ve had was one of the last bottles off the line before the PBR factory shut down in town (drank last year), one of my club members worked the line until the end. I think it was around 1982 or 1983, which puts it at about 36 or 37 years? It was both better and worse than I expected. The club member has suggested that he has more bottles, and I don’t know how I feel about that.
Thank you everyone.
Was second guessing aging before this thread.
Going to shelf long aging for now.
Don’t care for brews above 5.5 ABV, higher ABV seems to favor aging.
Also, don’t care for barleywines.
Thanks
Yes. The higher the ABV and IBU, the better it ages. Low alcohol, low IBU beers generally don’t age as well. Of course your own taste preferences play a large part, too.
Denny is right for most beers. There are exceptions, such as lambic and geueze.
Great point Jeff.
Thanks
Just saw this thread. I have Barleywines going back every year from 2019 - 2014. The '14 won two consecutive BOS when it was about 4 years old and it is still really good after 6 years. One of the locals and I brew one together every year (I don’t need 5 gallons of BW so we split the batch and each get a case of bottles). We try something a little different with each batch. We caramelized the first runnings in the 2019 and it has been in the keg for almost a year now and tastes great. Gonna bottle it in the next couple weeks.
I have a few bottles of both the '93 and '94 Thomas Hardy Ales here and although the sherry notes are higher from oxidation, they are still pretty amazing.
I agree with Denny on not overaging most beers. However, other beers that I have made that age really well are Russian Imperial Stouts and my Wee Heavy. Some porters also benefit from some aging as they mellow out a bit when the flavors marry a bit more.
As a side note, I recently made a RIS a couple months ago and aged it for 12 days on oak chips soaked in Crown Royal whiskey. It is really good but the aging time after kegging has allowed more of the wood character to come out. I just made another batch this past Tuesday and am going to reduce the contact time with the wood to about a week and taste it a bit more frequently to subdue the wood notes a bit.
Perhaps I was too quick stating I don’t like Barleywine.
I only had it once from a local brewery, and spit it out.
What would be an excellent Barleywine I could buy to taste ?
Thanks
There are 2 basic styles of barleywine…English and American. American tends to be more bitter, English is sweeter and may be more to your liking.
I prefer American Barleywine to English Barleywine because it has more hops to combat all the malt. Sierra Nevada Bigfoot is always a great example and some people don’t like it without at least a year of age on it.
Found this online.
Bigfoot and Bourbon County Brand Barleywine seem like winners to me.
Guess I’ll write down top 5 from each category,
and see what’s available.
Thanks
I killed off a few sour beers over the summer I brewed at the end of 2011 and bottled at the end of 2012 that was a blend with sour beer from the year prior. I have quite a few bottles from around 2013 and 2014 I am trying to pull out and drink so I can get some new stuff in bottles.
Generally everything I put in bottles now I intend to age for more than a year which doesn’t sound like quite what you are asking. I only bottled up to a couple years ago but liked drinking most of my non-high ABV beers fairly young especially as my brewing techniques improved and propensity to make errors on the brew day decreased.
Outside of Bigfoot is anybody still making the traditional American barleywine? Most of that style seems to have been consumed by double/triple IPA on one end and the boozy almost English barleywines on the other.
Bigfoot is a good one and it seems to jold its bitterness aafter a couple of years of aging.
Bigfoot is definitely a very visible example at most bottle shops, but I have also had Dogfish Head’s Olde School Barleywine and found it to be eminently sippable.
Bigfoot nowhere to be found, or any other barleywine.
Checked Sierra Nevada’s website, they start making Bigfoot in January.
Will buy a 6 pack, put in basement, drink one every Christmas.
How did Lutra work out for you ?
Thanks