TIL: never give up on a beer.

I had a simple 5 gal batch ale(Northern Brewers on top of Willamette, 13lb of pale ale malt) and left it in the primary fermenter for almost a year, procrastinating--had everything to keg it but some tubing and starsan--and drinking store bought beer. Figuring it would be ruined, I opened it up and took some out with a thief, and it still had a substantial bit of alcohol and no bad tastes but a touch of wierdness from sitting at a high temperature during the summer. Force carbed it and it is still drinkable, although not my best ale. I learned that you never know what you will find even if you do something outrageous to your beer like I did. I also learned that I need 2x the Willamette in order to get the same taste/aroma as I did with tetnang, or so I think.

After a year the hops resemble almost nothing of their original self. I wouldn't make changes to your hop needs based on how a beer tttastes after a year if you don't plan on letting it sit for a year again. Now, this is good Intel if you plan to brew and age a beer, you know what said hops taste like after a year.

I agree it never giving up. My Oktoberfest tasted sour coming out of the primary. I thought it was ruined. On the contrary! I let it sit in the secondary for two weeks. Sample I took last night tasted great. I almost feel bad for adding in the cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla and small amount of raw pumpkin.

We just finished pressing about 240lbs of Concord grapes from the local diner's trellises and I got the motivation to look into this ale again. My other buddy is the wine and mead expert and I tagged along to the brewing store and got the last items I needed to keg this ale. I probably could have bottled it but I wanted to try out kegging. I'll try the same recipe again and see if it tastes different after only a couple of weeks in the primary+secondary.