Beer Getting Old
I’ve long been a tremendous fan of aged beer. Not all of it, obviously, but stronger ales and the occasional oddball porter have for years impressed me in aged form (let’s say 3 or more years of age) with big changes in flavor, new flavors coming from the degradation of old flavors, the gentle sherry notes of significantly old beers. I’ve had the good luck to try some pretty old stuff, too, from a 1929 Bass Prince’s Ale to my own stash of Bigfoot Barleywine that spans a decade, with all sorts of interesting stuff in between (such as a Ballantine Burton Ale brewed in 1946, bottled in 1955, and addressed to Casey Stengel). Most of these rarities have come via some friends in New York who hunt down seriously aged beers as a hobby, and come up with some astounding stuff. The best example would be their tasting of the 1869 Ratcliff Ale … a full year or more before these news stories popped up.
Before I met that crew, though, the Chicago Beer Society introduced me to the concept of aged beer, first with a 1989 Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale in January of 1997, and later with vertical tastings of Anchor’s Our Special Ale (1985 - 1998), Dominion Millennium (1993 - 1998), and Bigfoot (1988 - 1998), along with other random examples of aged homebrew, etc. I started buying stuff up myself, primarily Bigfoot, in order to reap the rewards of cellaring myself, and since then have amassed a reasonable collection of vintage beer.
This fall, I started to realize that not everything in the cellar was doing all that well, so I decided that this winter would be the winter of Drinking Through The Cellar. About 1/10th of the way through the targeted bottles, things are most definitely NOT what I expected. Many beers that I would have thought would go along for years had crapped out entirely, passing well out of the range of “short decline” into just plain stale beer. I’m a bit worried.
However, there are still things like the glorious 1998 Bigfoot to hearten me: that beer, round about 2003, started turning slowly into one of the more spectacular examples of aged beer I’ve had (on the “young” end of things … less than 15 years). I suppose I knew, really, going in that cellaring was a gamble, given that 99.9% of beers aren’t really up for it, and the packaging of beer is definitely not up for it. Even wine, where cellaring is accepted, most wines aren’t meant for it, and the few that are have more definitive timeframes. I think.
This weekend, I went through a few things:
- 2005 Bigfoot: moving along nicely, although certainly heading into a muddy period.
- Ramstein Winter Wheat, unknown vintage: Likely in the 3-4 year category, it was down to about 1/3 great beer, 2/3 old beer. Still good, but that matches with known short-term bottle longevity for this brewery.
- 2001 Goose Island Christmas Ale: Stale beer. This one seems to max out at 3-4 years … 6 was way too much. Drain received this one (sadly).
- 2006 Bigfoot: Still great. Only the slightest decline in aroma. But that’s what happens in particularly hoppy years of Bigfoot.
Lots of stuff yet to hit, so hopefully I’ll be able to share out some of the large bottles with others as the “winter” chugs along. We’ll see how things go.
January 22nd, 2007 at 5:20 pm
Nice post - I only now got back to your blog after the “suspension.” I agree about the 06 Bigfoot - it tastes as good now as it did last February.