Recommended Aging by Beer-Type

So I've seen in a number of posts (mostly "is my beer ruined" type posts) the suggestion that the original poster give his/her beer a few weeks more to age and try again.

It got me thinking. I see in numerous recipes the instruction that a beer age a certain amount of time. The time specified appears to correlate to the OG. A higher OG, a longer conditioning time. Is this accurate?

For someone just getting into home brewing, is there a consensus of the APPROXIMATE times a type of beer should age for optimal flavor?

Fill in the blank? (Feel free to add others, I just outlined the rough categories)

Pale Ale =
Amber Ale =
Brown Ale =
Porter =
Stout =

Imperial Versions?

Wheats?

Light lagers / Pilsners =
Marzen =
Bocks =

Thanks!

generally the higher the alcohol % the longer they should age. I did a chocolate rasberry stout with real rasberries and added way too many. Tasted like **** quite frankly and i just popped one open after a few months and it has mellowed quite a bit down to slightly distasteful. I figure a few more months and its gonna be quite good. Just taste your brew along the way to see how its doing.

I would echo what scinerd said. I would add, however, that wheat beers typically don't age well and are ready to drink after just a week or so and can go down hill fast after a month. There are obviously a lot of variabel in play here, and different people will undoubtedly have different experience, but in general this is true.

I prefer my Lagers after about a month of aging in the keg.

Also, although I have no scientific data to support this, I feel a more complex grain bill requires a little more time than a simple one to allow the various flavor contributors to mellow and merge together.

These are things to which you really can't assign arbitrary numbers.

For one thing, your brewery is different than mine is different than Scinerd's. The exact same Pale Ale brewed in each brewery is going to require different techniques, techniques learned by each of us through actually brewing in our breweries. An example: a brewer equipped with temperature-controlled fermenters, a filter and kegs can crash-chill, filter and artificially carbonate Pale Ale in two weeks; it'll take me at least three before I get it into the keg, and I naturally carbonate, so that's five weeks right there.

For another thing, it's all dependent on your taste. I like to drink Witbier right out of the primary! Others won't touch it until it's a month in the bottles. Who's right? I suppose we could put "1-6 weeks" after your entry for "Wheat Beer". I like low-gravity "session" beers as soon as they're carbonated, fresh fresh fresh. Others, again, won't touch 'em unless they've aged a month in the secondary. Again, "1-6 weeks".

Trouble is, that range is so wide that it's no longer useful information. I mean, there's common sense - you don't want to drink Barleywine that's two weeks old - but most of it is reading up on the different styles and making a SWAG* at aging times.

You have to brew, young Paduan, brew lots of beer, age it, taste it along the way, keep careful notes. Only then will you learn your brewery and your tastes, and how those two things impact your decisions about aging.

Cheers,

Bob

* Scientific Wild-A$s Guess

BobNQ3X said:

You have to brew, young Paduan, brew lots of beer, age it, taste it along the way, keep careful notes. Only then will you learn your brewery and your tastes, and how those two things impact your decisions about aging.

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Damn! You mean we don't all share the same tastes, styles, water, and techniques? I kid. I know I'll figure out what works best for me over time. I really just wanted to confirm I was interpreting other posts correctly that a higher OG usually means a longer conditioning time.

Thanks all!

i did a chocolate stout last year .. very high alcohol content

took it 9 months to fully smooth out

my first was a pale ale --- took it 6 weeks
my 2nd was an amber ale -- that one took 3 months

... i also did my aging in a closet in my garage ... temperatures ranged from 65 degree's to 85 degree's

I really just wanted to confirm I was interpreting other posts correctly that a higher OG usually means a longer conditioning time.

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Pretty much, you got it.