Cellaring Beer
To keep or not to keep.
That may not be quite the question Hamlet asked himself, but it is one homebrewers and beer drinkers in general might well ask themselves. If you have a beer you like, isn’t it worth keeping a few to one side, not just to drink later, but in order that the beer may “improve” in flavor? The first answer is a resounding “No!” You may be surprised at that answer since many authors and pundits have recommended laying down a few bottles of each brew so that the beer can mature and develop its real flavor. Unfortunately that is just not true as I shall explain, although there are of course exceptions.
In my area of Connecticut I introduced the concept of keeping a “beer cellar,” which I began to do in the 1970s. I brought this cellar with me when I came to the US in 1978, and the quality of some of those beers induced others to lay down their own cellars. But what was then a modest cellar contained two very important beers, which are relevant to this discussion. These were some 1975 Thomas Hardy Ales (brewed by Eldridge Pope the originators of the beer), and 1978 Barclay’s Russian Imperial Stout, each bottle proudly labeled with the year in which the beer was brewed.
The Hardy Ale was billed as being capable of keeping for up to 25 years, and although the Barclay’s beer was brewed at much the same strength it made no such claim. I cherished these beers for some years and it was not until the 1990s when they were about 20 years old that I tasted them with a few friends. The Hardy Ale had held up well and was malty, nutty, with Sherry-like overtones and not too sweet. The Barclay’s beer was flaccid, almost tasteless and quite clearly well over the hill. In short there was no comparison between the two, and I was bitterly disappointed that a famous beer that I had nursed for so long had turned out so poorly.
Of course, that immediately raised the question as to why such apparently similar beers should have turned out so differently. My friend, Jeff Browning (the brewer at BrüRm@BAR in New Haven, Connecticut) and I have debated the matter ever since and come up with our own approach to selecting beers for laying down. I shall discuss that later in this column, but first I’ll give you another example with two beers I tasted just yesterday. One was a recreation of a porter from a 1750 recipe, 5 gallons (19 L) of which I brewed at home, and it was 15 years old when tasted. We brewed a version of this on a 10-barrel scale, and it was exactly 10 years old when it was sampled. Both beers held a fundamentally good flavor, malty and rich, but both were somewhat spoilt by being too acidic, with the younger beer being more sour than the older one.
Neither of the beers had had any noticeable acidity when bottled, so it had developed on storage. And it seems likely that this difference between the two beers was in how they had been handled. The homebrewed one had been bottled right after fermentation was complete, while the other had been kegged from a serving tank, kept there some time, racked into another keg and then bottled. Clearly the second had been handled more often so there was more chance of it picking up acid-producing bacteria. This demonstrates a very important point about aging beer, which is that any fault in the beer, and not just acidity, will be magnified over time. For some more detailed comments on the chemistry of aging beers see the “Advanced Brewing” column in the December 2012 issue of Brew Your Own.
Which beer?
By now you’re probably wondering when I’m going to stop talking and get down to some useful advice. First let me point out that these “rules” apply to both commercial and homebrewed beers. And if you are not already doing so, you ought to be buying commercial craft beers, both to develop your own palate and to have a “marker” to judge your own beers by. The basic points are these:
1. Think about the beer
2. Taste it carefully
3. Ask yourself if it is possible to improve on its present taste
4. If you decide to keep it put aside several bottles
5. Test a bottle at intervals
6. If it tastes good at any point, go ahead and drink it
Let me explain these points. The first one is something you ought always to do. If it is your own brew, what did you intend it to be? If it is one you bought, try to think what the person who brewed it intended it to taste like, taking into account the style it is supposed to be. There’s a good argument that you should always eat the dish the way the chef intended you should, and not to add extras such as seasonings. Or to put it another way, there are good reasons why brewers will often tell you the beer is at its best at the brewery, where it is at its freshest. When you have done that move to point two and taste it. Did you hit the nail on the head with your own beer? If so drink it now, don’t keep it. If the commercial beer matches its description, you should do the same.
But what if it doesn’t match expectation? Then you ask yourself where it differs from what you expected, and whether any flavor aspect sticks out and unbalances the beer. If there is an obvious fault, is that one that will disappear with age, or will it get worse? If it is the latter, drink it now. For example, if the alcohol stands out and the beer tastes a little hot, then that might well mellow out with keeping. But if the beer is out of balance because it is over-attenuated and tastes thin, that won’t change on storage, so drink it up. Similarly, if the beer is too bitter or too hoppy in general it won’t improve with keeping, so use it up quickly. If it is a little too sweet that can be reduced by keeping it so long as some yeast is still present, although this can result in over-carbonation, and might be better cured by keeping it longer in bulk in the secondary. It should be clear that any hint of oxidation, such as a cardboard flavor, or any sign of infection, such as over-acidity means that the beer is doomed.
The last three points go together, and help you to guard against wasting a good beer. A beer that improves with aging will generally only do so for a certain period. After that it will drop off the cliff very rapidly, so you want to catch it before it does so. Also, it will tell you whether there is any improvement after, say, a year or eighteen months. If not there is probably never going to be any, so best get it down your throat now.
What styles do I suggest might be worth keeping? Well, any beer below 6% ABV should not be left to hang around — alcohol is a great preservative. Lager beers in general do not improve over time, as they have done their mellowing in the lagering stage. Highly-hopped beers are not candidates for long maturing as hop aroma characteristics can spoil through oxidation and hop bitterness can fade with time, throwing the beer out of balance. So we are basically looking at big, malty beers, such as barleywines, imperial stouts and the inaccurately-named imperial porters. Very strong lagers (Samichlaus from Austria at 14% ABV comes to mind) will also keep well, although it could be argued that they do not actually improve but simply maintain their level of quality. There is also an argument that big beers flavored with chocolate, coffee, oak, and so on can benefit from maturation if the flavor has not melded in to give a balanced drink. Similarly, such as an imperial stout aged in a whisky or bourbon barrel may take a little while to mellow out, although those from craft brewers are generally only released when the brewer considers them ready to drink.
How to cellar beer
There are a number of points to take into account in order to get the best results when aging beer.
1. Brew the cleanest beer you can
2. Store cool
3. Keep away from light (artificial or natural) as much as possible
4. Use only brown bottles, avoid green or clear ones
5. Check as often as you can how the beer is doing
The first point is that you must be scrupulous about cleaning and sanitizing all vessels. You may find it boring that pundits keep offering this advice, but a brewer is first and foremost a cleaner. You also want to avoid hot side aeration, which is often the cause of introducing the precursors of staling compounds into the beer, and cellaring will give them ample time to convert them into compounds giving off flavors, such as wet cardboard tastes. And, of course you want to avoid oxygen pick-up as much as possible, so avoid splashing whenever the beer is transferred. It is probably best if you can age in bulk in a stainless steel keg rather than bottling, which can easily introduce both oxygen and bacteria. If you do bottle the beer, then use a counter-pressure filler, make the beer “fob” over the top of the bottle, and use oxygen scavenger caps. And finally, keep the yeast in the beer at as low a level as possible, just enough to permit conditioning to take place, which shouldn’t be a problem in the timeframe we are talking about. I know that yeast will help to keep oxygen levels down, but in a beer kept for months or even years it can also undergo autolysis and produce unwelcome flavors.
The second point is very important because the rate of chemical reactions, such as oxidation and staling are accelerated as the temperature is increased. You may think you have a nice cool basement when you lay the beer down in winter, but how much does it warm up in the summer? The maximum you really want is 52 °F (11 °C), which isn’t always easy to achieve. My basement is pretty good, but in a New England summer it can sometimes get up to 70 °F (21 °C). I overcome that with a beer freezer kept at around 45 °F (7 °C). If you can’t keep the temperature down your cellaring experiments are doomed.
Points three and four really go together, because the ultraviolet part of the visible spectrum is no good for beer. Long exposure to it even in brown bottles will result in skunky flavors. Green and brown bottles are asking for trouble for they transmit ultraviolet light much too easily. My personal rule is also that I just will not buy a beer in a clear bottle, period.
Finally, the last point I have already dealt with, but it needs repeating. Keep an eye on the beer, and if it tastes as if it has come to a peak drink it because it can go downhill quickly.
