Aging Beer

Probably the first thing I started doing besides just drinking beer, was hording some away in the cellar to be aged. While  fresh is better for many beers, there are plenty that, like some wines, can be aged for years. Not just any beer can be tucked away for a while and emerge a great beer though, there are certain criteria or guidelines for whether age can be a friend to a beer.

First off, with a couple exceptions, any beer that's a candidate to be cellared should have a fairly high alcohol content. This higher ABV signals that more ingredients (more malt, more hops etc) were used and the resulting beer has enough flavor to stand up to extended aging and oxidation. Some light oxidized notes (often imparting a sherry-like flavor) can add to the depth and complexity of a vintage beer, but they will often quickly overrun a typical lower ABV beer. Now, during the aging process, a few things tend to happen. Firstly, any harsh boozy notes will usually fade over time, and what may have been a very rough beer young will smooth out. Malty, sweet flavors will tend to become more pronounced and well integrated. Hoppy flavors, and eventually some bitterness will fade. Finally, flavors from additives such as coffee or spices will lose prominence. The result is that beers such as imperial stouts and porters, and barleywines, wheatwines, and old ales are all ideal candidates to be squirreled away for a while. The only big beers that don't really benefit from aging are imperial IPAs. They tend to be so one dimensionally hoppy that when the hops fade over time, there's not much left to keep the beer interesting. The aforementioned exceptions to the high alcohol guideline are wild and sour ales. Despite sometimes being down as low as around 5%ABV, these beers  have some legs to them. The unusual microbes that give these beers their trademark funky and/or sour characteristics are extremely slow working, and given extra years to do their thing, they can produce some of the most complex and flavorful beers around.

One common activity craft beer fans who cellar brews do is assemble multiple vintages of the same beer, and then drink them side by side to see the effects of aging.  This is called building a "vertical" of a given beer. Beers such as Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout and Sierra Nevada Bigfoot are frequently tucked away every winter until a vertical is assembled and opened for a tasting (I've seen verticals that had up to 10 or more years of the same beer).

The oldest beer I've ever had was a bottle of JW Lees Harvest Ale from 1988 as part of a special event at Lord Hobo in Cambridge MA during Boston Beer Week 2010. Runners up are the kegs of Bigfoot from 1994 and 1996 that Sierra Nevada brought to Extreme Beer Fest 2010 and 2011 respectively. I've never had the JW Lees beer fresh, but the Sierra Nevada vintages tasted miles apart from fresh Bigfoot. Totally different (and in my mind, even tastier) beer with the age on it. I've been working on building a solid cellar for about a year and a half now, and here's a semi-recent snapshot of what I've managed to pull together so far

I keep a spreadsheet to track everything that's in the cellar (~200 bottles right now), but a couple months of trading and drinking from it tends to get everything uncoordinated, so I pull everything out of hiding to get an updated count. Ideal cellaring conditions are a temperature of about 55 degrees and darkness. My basement doesn't get quite that cold, but the temperature is stable (which is important), and with the help of a little cardboard, I keep everything light free. I tend to not drink too much from the cellar yet, I'm still more in the process of figuring out which beers I really like and want to buy extras of, and then actually getting a few bottles of them. In future years though, I look forward to being able to pull out vintage brews to drink (and hopefully write about here) on a whim.