What I’ve Learned So Far About Aging and Cellaring Beer: Part 1

Why should you bother cellaring beer? Besides the obvious benefits that come with having a basement full of beer Why not just drink it fresh?

Probably best reason is that aging beer can increase the complexity of your beer. Flavors can often be found in an aged beer that weren’t present in the fresh version. You can also commonly find certain flavors that seem to enhance with age, becoming more and more prominent and delicious as the year(s) pass.

What hasn’t been fully determined is how these flavors emerge. Are they only being tasted as a result of other stronger flavors subsiding as the beer ages? Or are these actual new flavors coming out of the cellaring process? Regardless of the origin, you’ll experience new flavor sensations in your aged brew.

Cellaring a beer can also result in a more balanced beverage. Strong flavors can overwhelm a beer in its infancy. You’ll often see an experienced cellarer writing about the “calming down” of a beer, or rather giving it time for its strong flavors to subside a bit. The taste components start to meld and work together instead of fighting each other. You end up with a brew that’s better in sync with itself and much nicer to drink because of it.

Beers often change their character as they age, allowing you to have a very different experience when drinking your aged beer. My 2004 vintage of Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale started off as a hoppy, spicy, bitter beer. It was a joy to drink. Two and half years of rest have changed it to this smooth, deeply chocolate beverage with a whisper of spice. Still a joy to drink, but a much different beverage then the one I had years ago. Neither was “better” then the other, both where fantastic!

There are also some good reasons NOT to cellar beer. The most obvious one is that if you don’t like the styles of beer that tend to settle well, there’s not much reason for you to age your beer. Also, if you don’t have the right environment available to store your beer in, you probably aren’t going to want to do much cellaring. I’ll be exploring these environmental and beer style issues in later parts of this series.

Bye for now!