Total SCORE!!

So I'm bottling my new Christmas Stout recipe this evening and discovered a hidden score deluxe! I started kegging a few years ago and rarely bottle anymore.... unless it's the sort of beer I know needs to age for a while. So I'm shuffling around boxes of bottles, and low and behold, I find an entire case of a Brewer's Best Irish Stout I made almost 4 years ago. I think this was my 4th batch ever. I seem to remember it didn't carb up and I used half of it in cooking and a few give aways for friends to let sit in their closets for a while in the hopes some would carb eventually.... So I'm thinking, "maybe they finally straightened out and may still be good enough to drink" so rather than put some in the fridge and wait for them to cool and dissolve CO2, I decide to crack one and poor it at room temp and see what I have. Holy Heck, Batman, not only is it nicely carbed, this is one suprisingly darn good beer! I'm so pumped! AND I think I need to be sure and bottle from time to time so I can have this glorious birthday/Christmas kind of experience again! It's like finding $20 in a pair of jeans when fall first hits ONLY BETTER

Similar story: about a month ago I was getting ready to bottle a new Saison when I found six full bottles of my IIPA that I brewed last year. Obviously less "imperial" in terms of hop presence, but damn it was some tasty stuff.

I saved a sixer of 3 of my best brews from 3-4 months ago. Started tasting them and they all are crazy malty now. Room temps were not kind to this Belgo DIPA, Tripel IPA, and Tripel. Seriously, awesome beers are now barely drinkable 3 months later. Fortunately my bottling processes are now far better, I use oxygen barrier caps on beers I'll store, and I'm shopping for a beer fridge.

Just thought I'd present the opposite side of the coin. I'm planning a homebrew party soon just to move a lot of this 'inferiorly' bottled stuff and free up some bottles.