Techniques for Brewing Age-Worthy Beers
I suppose most of us have dreamt of producing a beer that we will keep for years so we can pull out a bottle on special occasions to impress our friends and delight ourselves at its unique and wonderful flavors. Perhaps we might even want to barrel age it, a procedure that has become popular with many craft brewers. You might even have been impressed with a long-aged craft beer that someone brought along to a tasting session. Or you might be thinking that long maturation works well for wines, so why wouldn’t it work for your beer? Perhaps you have read somewhere that English owners of big country houses used to do a brew at the birth of their son that was laid down until he became of age? So you decide you are going to brew a beer that will be laid down in your cellar and have a flavor that will improve with long keeping.
If so, there are a number of points to be considered when deciding upon your approach.
Perhaps the most important point is deciding just what sort of beer you will make and in what way you want it to age. Do you want it to develop Sherry-like flavors, which come from limited oxidation on storage? Or do you want an unbalanced beer to even out and meld all its flavors into one mellow and satisfying brew? Or are there flavors you have detected in aged beers that you want to try to reproduce in your own? What style of beer would best suit your aims?
In my view there are few beer styles that will actually improve with long-term aging. Remember that not all wines improve with keeping, and those that do, especially the famous reds such as those from Burgundy and Bordeaux in France are often undrinkable when young. And in the vogue for barrel-aging craft beers the brewers are often looking to give time for the development of flavors by wild yeasts, such as Brettanomyces species, or by acid-producing bacteria. I won’t deal with those as it is not that aspect of maturation I want to consider here. Remember too, the old brewer’s adage that beer is at its freshest when it is ready to leave the brewery and will only go downhill from there. That is particularly true of low-alcohol session beers, but also applies to most beer up to about 7% ABV.
The obvious approach is that you want to go with a high-alcohol beer, since the alcohol will help protect it from infections and such beers are mostly full-bodied enough to carry the extra flavors that develop on aging. Also, high levels of alcohol often result in a harsh burning aspect to the beer’s flavor, which can mellow out on keeping. That means styles like barleywines and imperial stouts are best for aging, especially when the latter have been flavored with things like chocolate, coffee, and so on. Some typical commercial examples include Otter Creek Twentieth Anniversary Ale from Middlebury, Vermont, Igor’s Dream Russian Imperial Stout from Two Roads Brewing in Stratford, Connecticut, and Chocolate Oak-Aged Yeti from Great Divide Brewing in Denver, Colorado. Craft beers like these are usually aged in the brewery and, as special brews, are only available on a limited basis. A unique example, because of its very high alcohol content (it varies but is usually in the 20% ABV range) is Sam Adams’ Utopias.
I am using the style names barleywine and imperial stout in the broadest sense and lumping together with them styles like strong ales and imperial red ale, since these are really only variations on the theme of barleywine. And in my opinion the so-called imperial porter is really only part of the imperial stout family. I would not include double IPAs, which are now so popular and are nothing more than heavily hopped barleywines. Beers such as those, which are principally about hop flavor and aroma, will lose most of that on keeping, and can even develop unpleasant flavors due to oxidation of hop oils during long storage. Having said that, some of the more fiercely hopped West Coast IPAs might benefit by aging, as the hop character tones down and the beers become more balanced — but I would not recommend risking it and finding you have wasted an otherwise good beer!
Are there other beer styles that can benefit from aging? Well, perhaps — Belgian strong ales come to mind, especially the tripel and quadruple versions, but only the fuller-bodied versions brewed with a small proportion of sugar. Few other beers come to mind as suited to long storage. It might be thought that some of the stronger lager beers, such as doppelbock (and probably Baltic porters) might benefit in this way, but I do not think so, simply because the whole process of brewing these beers is aimed at producing a mellow, rounded drink that does not need further aging.
One interesting example is Samichlaus Classic from the Castle Brewery in Eggenberg, Austria. It is brewed once a year at 14% ABV and is remarkably pale for such a strong beer, and it is a very full-flavored sipping beer. It keeps remarkably well for I have had samples several years old that have lost none of their flavor. However, there was little or no change in the beer’s palate over time, simply because it started out with no jagged edges needing to be sanded down by aging.
Of course, whether a beer improves with age is very much a subjective thing and you can age whatever beer
you like. But, keep in mind that most beers actually deteriorate during long aging, partly because that gives sufficient time for any brewing defects to develop. Only those that are well brewed and full-bodied enough to keep any flavor changes in balance will benefit from long-term maturation and it is not always easy to predict whether an individual beer will improve over time. I have a cautionary tale about that, for in England I once picked up samples of Eldridge Pope’s Thomas Hardy Ale and Wells & Young’s Courage Russian Imperial Stout, both of which are held in high regard by aficionados. I had only two small bottles of each from the respective 1978 vintages and was reluctant to try them for a long while. I finally opened them at a tasting for a select group of enthusiasts, by which time they were 20 years old. The Thomas Hardy Ale was excellent, mellow, fruity, and full of Sherry-like notes. On the other hand, the Courage Stout was disappointing, thin and somewhat cardboard in character. The difference between the two beers might have been for any reason; perhaps it was due to something in the brewing processes, or the basic formulation of the individual beers. I still really don’t know why, so I am warning you to bear this in mind if you do want to brew a beer to lay down.
Brewing hints
So let’s say you choose to brew and lay down a barleywine or an imperial stout. What rules are there for formulating an appropriate recipe? In fact, not many, all you want is a strong beer, say 8-10% ABV or higher, so aim for an original gravity (OG) of 1.080–1.120 (19.3–28 °P). You would use a normal base pale malt, and whatever suits you in the way of roasted malts, even in the barleywine if you choose to make a dark version. Chocolate and black malt are fine and increase the level of reductones in the beer, these being compounds that help to protect against oxidation. Chocolate, coffee, vanilla, etc. are still appropriate in the stout, since the bigger the beer’s flavor the better it is likely to age. I would not use any kind of fruit in the stout as fruit flavors do not generally hold up well on aging and the fruit addition if made after primary fermentation can result in the ingress of oxygen, with subsequent deterioration of the beer long term.
High bitterness levels are fine as any harshness from the hops will mellow out over time. If you want a little hop character light late addition of hops can be carried out, but aggressive addition of aroma hops, especially from dry hopping, will cause problems on aging, as discussed earlier. Yeast selection and handling is very important, and I’ll deal with that later.
In the actual brewing, remember that any faults in the beer will be magnified in long-term storage. So first and foremost you must be clean! Inspect all your equipment and make sure there are no residues of any kind left in them. Sanitize every vessel that will hold wort or beer, every piece of transfer equipment such as pumps or siphon tubes, and when you’ve done that, sanitize them again to be sure they’re safe to use. Remember that any bacteria that get through to the final beer will have ample time during the storage period to multiply and spoil your beer. In that respect, wooden barrels present a problem, since it is difficult to be sure there are no unwanted creatures lurking in the porous wood.
You need a good boil to be sure there are no precursors of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) in the wort if you are using a lager malt, or use 2-row ale malt to avoid this potential problem. Limit the amount of stirring and splashing of the hot wort in transfer so as to avoid later formation of 2-trans-nonenal, which is a major cause of cardboard flavors in aged beer.
Similarly, try to prevent oxygen pick-up during transfers, such as racking, kegging, and bottling, as significant levels of oxygen in the finished beer will result in significant flavor deterioration during aging. Be careful to avoid splashing when racking and kegging, and sparging the receiving vessel with CO2 before transfer will help you control beer oxygen levels. Even better is to use a system where the beer is “pushed” from one vessel to the other by means of CO2 pressure. There is more risk of oxygen pick-up in bottling because of the extra operations involved, although it will be beneficial to use a counter-pressure filler that permits flushing of the bottles with CO2 before filling. If you don’t have such a filler do be very, very careful to avoid splashing as you fill the bottles. If you do bottle the beer, use oxygen scavenging crown caps and do not even think about
using corks!
You must also be cautious during fermentation — select a yeast with good attenuation and make a starter. I would suggest using 2–4 packs of yeast and making a starter of 4 qts. (3.8 L) a few days in advance of brewing. You need to get to as low a finishing gravity as possible, preferably close to 75% attenuation, so that the beer is not too sweet and there is a limited amount of nutrients for stray bacteria or wild yeasts to feed on during aging. That means you should also oxygenate your wort before pitching the starter so that the yeast gets off to a vigorous start. You should also be careful to have a proper diacetyl rest for several days at
65-70 °F (18-21 °C).
When the beer is ready and is in its final storage container(s), keep it somewhere cool or, better still, cold. It is a golden rule of chemistry that increasing temperature increases reaction rates, so that oxidative and bacterial degradation will be sped up if you keep the beer warm.
If you kegged the beer it is a good idea to periodically check the pressure and to top it up if it has fallen from the desired serving level at all. Monitor the aging process by sampling the keg or the odd bottle at 3-month intervals and drink as soon as there is any sign of deterioration setting in. Once it begins going downhill it will not stop!
Finally a Recipe
Below is a recipe for a barleywine I have made and that has aged well. It is a simple recipe and can be made either as all-grain or with extract. If you go for all-grain and your mash system cannot handle the amount of grain required for 5 gallons (19 L), just scale it down to 3 gallons (11 L). That will also reduce the cost and the risk of anything going wrong during the aging process, but if you follow the hints above you will truly have a beer with which to impress your friends!
Top Spin Barleywine
(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.110 FG = 1.030
IBU = 90 SRM = 8 ABV = 11.8%
Ingredients
23 lbs. (10.4 kg) British 2-row pale malt
30 AAU Magnum pellet hops (90 min.)
(2 oz./57 g at 15% alpha acids)
1 Whirlfloc® tablet (20 min.)
4 packs Wyeast 1335 (British Ale II) or
Lallemand Nottingham Ale yeast
2⁄3 cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by Step
Prepare a 4-qt. (3.8-L) yeast starter 3–4 days in advance of brewing. On brew day mash the grains at 149–151 °F (65–66 °C) for 1 hour using 7 gallons (27 L) hot strike water. Run off and sparge with hot water to collect 6–7 gallons (23–27 L) of wort depending upon your boil evaporation rate.
Boil for 90 minutes (or longer so as to reach target original gravity if necessary), adding the hops at the start and the Whirlfloc® copper finings 20 minutes before the end.
After the boil is complete, run off from the trub, taking care to avoid splashing the hot wort, and cool to about 70 °F (21 °C). Pitch yeast from the starter once that temperature has been reached. After pitching, bubble oxygen through a 5-micron stone for 1–2 minutes.
Allow to ferment for 7–10 days so as to afford a good diacetyl rest after the main fermentation
subsides. Rack very carefully to the secondary and allow the beer to sit for no more than seven days before kegging or bottling. Prime if you wish, but there is likely to be enough secondary fermentation in the bottle to give good condition. Store in a cool or cold place and taste regularly to ensure no off-flavors are developing.
Extract version
Substitute 15 lbs. (6.8 kg) of pale liquid malt extract (Maris Otter extract is perfect) for the 2-row pale malt. Boil for 90 minutes using a full 5-gallon (19-L) boil; less boiling or lower wort volume will result in very poor hop utilization in this high gravity wort. Add the hops at the start and the Whirlfloc® copper finings 20 minutes before the end.
After the boil is complete, cool to 70 °F (21 °C). Pitch yeast from the starter once that temperature has been reached. After pitching, bubble oxygen through a 5-micron stone for 1–2 minutes. Follow the same fermentation instructions as listed in the all-grain version.
