Hello everyone! Today it’s time for the fourth part of my series examing why high alcohol beers age so well (Be sure to check out my previous posts on this subject: Part1 Part2 Part3). Today’s topic is:

4.  Compounds Produced Along With Ethanol - Brewing methods that are used to create these high alcohol “big beers” also create other compounds that are responsible for flavor enhancement during aging.

I love this line, by B.Vanderhaegen (and colleagues) in a 2003 paper published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry -

 As a general conclusion it becomes clear that all examined components present in fresh beer are not in chemical equilibrium conditions. During aging, chemical and biochemical reactions initiate either a decrease (esters) or an increase (ethyl esters, carbonyl compounds, Maillard compounds) in various flavor compounds.

I slightly paraphrased the quote to make it a little more readable, but I’m sure you get the gist. Beer is a highly complicated substance. There are 100’s of different compounds all reacting with each other in 100’s of different ways. It stands to reason that particular brewing methods will produce different types and amounts of flavor molecules. If we want to better understand the aging of high alcohol beers, we need to look at the brewing method typically used to brew them.

When making beer, brewers take barley and other grains, steep and heat them in water (called mashing) in order to produce wort. Wort is a sugar-rich liquid that can be fermented by various brewing yeasts to form alcohol. High alcohol beers typically derived from worts that are much denser then those used to make lower alcohol beers.

Now studies* have shown that as you increase the density of the wort used in your brewing, the levels of Maillard Intermediates in the resulting beer increases dramatically.  Maillard Intermediates are various compounds that will readily undergo Maillard Reactions in aging beer (be sure to see my previous post on Maillard Reactions).  Not only are Maillard Reactions responsible for flavors such as coffee, toffee caramel, buttery, and apple/solvent; but they can actually cause the color of your beer to darken.

Maillard Intermediates are just one class of compound that has been shown to increase with rising ethanol levels. There are thought to be others, such as one that eventually leads to the production of 3-MethylButanal (which causes malty, cocoa, spicy flavors), but they are currently not as well understood as the Maillard reaction pathway.

Modern brewing science has shown us there can be little doubt that the brewing process used to produce high alcohol beers have dramatic effects on the aging properties of those brews.

* One such study on the production of Maillard Intermediates was called “Influence of the brewing process on furfuryl ethyl ether formation during beer aging” and published in 2004 in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry

Jason

jason@brewbasement.com

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