Vintage Beers?

[WRATHWILDE]

For those who might have missed the news back in Sept. 2006, like I did.
-snip-
It was brewed in the year that the Suez Canal opened, Charles Dickens embarked on one of his last literary tours and the Cutty Sark was launched in Scotland.
The recently-discovered cache of 1869 ale should have been undrinkable, given the conventional brewing wisdom that even the best beers are supposed to last no more than a couple of decades. Beer experts, however, say the 137-year-old brew tastes "absolutely amazing".

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/09/nbeer09.xml

Might be a good experiment for our beer brewers, high alcohol aged brews.

Cheers,
Wrathwilde

 

[GrantLee63]

Wrath - Thanks for posting this!

And here I thought the Barleywine I made in January was going to be good come the Holiday 2007 Season! Obviously I was wrong!!!

- GL63

 

[SpamDog]

Might be a good experiment for our beer brewers, high alcohol aged brews.

Cheers,
Wrathwilde

I'll give it a shot.. not sure if I have enough patience to wait till I am 164 years old to drink the beer.. but I will do my best

SpamDog

 

[ucflumberjack]

that is glorious. we should start a gotmead cellar, have an inner circle that passes down the secret location of the cellar until some of our meads/beers are over a hudred years old!!! just like the davinci code!

 

[kace069]

Great article Wrath, the new issue of zymurgy had a story about the coming of the beer sommelier. Looks like that day is coming.

 

[beninak]

I've wondered about this ever since i started homebrewing (which has only been about 5 months or so). I've always heard that "fresh beer is better" and the Budweiser "born-on date" and so on. But for the beers that i've made, they just seem to improve with age. Granted its only been about 5 months, but i still have a 6-pack of the first pale ale i made and every time i try it, its better than the time before and better than anything i've made since.

On the flip side, I recently tried a beer from the Sam Adams "Patriot Collection" (after i bought it i noticed the "Best by Oct.2006") and it was absolutely horrible, had to pour it out.

Does it have something to do with a different process or ingredients between homebrewing and commercial brews? Like I said I'm still new and maybe my pale ale will start getting rancid next week, but I hope not!

 

[wayneb]

I started brewing beer back in the early 80's, and I gave my Dad a case of one of my batches of porter as a Christmas gift back in 1982. He passed away a few years ago (back in 2002), and as we were cleaning out the house I found the remnants of that case, with 3 bottles still unopened, in the basement. It was kept under near ideal conditions, with temps hovering around 55-57F and absolutely no exposure to light.

I popped those bottles open with my surviving uncles, partly in tribute to my Dad and partly just to satisfy my own curiosity as to whether or not the brew had anything left to offer after 20 years. Wow, what a smooth, creamy, delightful result! FWIW, if the bottles are treated well, I think dark, heavy brews such as porter have the potential to keep for a long time -- maybe as much as a century!