Aging Beer Explained

Beers are made to be drunk fresh, period. That sentence is true for 99% of the beer, but some beer styles get the benefits of a prolonged maturation in a bottle. The duration of aging varies from 6 months to more than a decade and that will depend on several factors. But before we talk about that, subscribe to this newsletter to be aware of every new content and like and share this article!

The way a beer ages depend on its characteristics. Let’s split this theme into topics, where we can discuss the importance of each characteristic when choosing a beer for aging.

Alcohol Content

The most important comes first. High alcohol content is almost a prerequisite to enable a beer to age. I said almost because is possible to age low-alcohol beer if it is smoked or sour beer, but a great part of the ageable beers are very alcoholic ones (at least 8% ABV). The time a beer can (or should) be aged depends on how high the alcohol is, as a rule of thumb, as much as high the alcohol is, the more it can be aged. The explanation is that alcohol acts as a preservative during the aging process.

In fact, one of the reasons you may choose to age a beer is to mellow the booziness of the beer. In the prolongated maturation, the fusel alcohols will be converted into aldehydes and esters, resulting in very distinctive flavors such as the sweets toffee and caramel and fruity apricot and grape.

Malt

The melanoidins resulting from Maillard products (from the malting or boiling process) are oxygen consumers (avoiding off-flavor as wet cardboard-like) and when aged produce amazing flavors, such as sherry, madeira, and amaretto. That makes beer with darker malts good candidates for aging; nonetheless, that doesn’t eliminate pale beer from the aging process. Duvel and Orval are a good examples of a pale beers that age very well.

It's important to keep a good residual sugar in beer when thinking about aging. As it happens to melanoidins, the sugar also reacts with oxygen, acting as an oxygen sponge. Some dry lambic beers escape this rule because they use wild yeast as antioxidants.

After some time aging, the beer will be thin. Besides the loss of the residual sugar, the proteins will be dropped out in some reactions with melanoidins.? It is expected that cloud wheat beers will become clear in six months or so. Sometimes the beer can have the feeling of higher viscosity and syrupy because of the new sweet-tasting compounds, but as a rule, the aged beer will be thinner.

Hops

There is not much to talk about hops here. Even being the rockstar in fresh beer, here they fade to forgetting. The hop flavor, in special the result from alpha-acids (and essential oils), are lost as time passes, so aging your Double IPA is definitely not a good idea.

Despite that, beta acids degrade slower and can add fruity, winelike, or musty to the vintage beer. In summary, choose hops with alpha-to-beta-acid ratios close to 1:1, for example, some noble and English varieties.

Esters and Phenols

Esters from fresh beer are volatile and will disappear; however, the phenols will pass through some interesting transformations. The pepper will become vanilla, the clove, leather, and smoke to tobacco, gifting the patient cellarers with these unique flavors.

Wood flavors

I will save the wood aging for another article; however, we can say the oak-derived flavor may remain constant over time (in bottle aging). Some small changes may occur where vanilla eventually disappears, cinnamon notes increase, and coconut survives untouched.

Yeasts

The yeast is the workforce in the aging process (as it is in the fermentation and standard maturation). Choosing wisely the yeast strain is essential to provide a better ester/phenol transformation. Here, not only the well-known Saccharomyces can work but wild yeasts as Bretanomyces or even bacteria can be added.

The Brettanomyces, or "Brett" for close friends, will eat everything (sugar and oxygen), making a beer completely dry. Another characteristic to be aware of Brett is the 'funky' flavors. This strain is famous for providing barnyard characteristics to beer (horse sweat, leather).

The bacteria can be added to provide lactic acid to sour beer or even to add a little bit of vinegar and bring complexity to the vintage beer, yes I know, you read it right!

In summary, what is good beer styles to be aged are:

• Barley wine
• Imperial Stouts
• Belgian Quad (I may include Trippel too)
• And the Sours lambic, gueuzes, and Flanders red ales.(and brown ale)

If you like the topic and want to know more, I recommend the book 'Vintage Beer'.

Thank you for reading! If you enjoy it, please like and comment on your opinion about aged beer!