Lost and Found!!!

So I am currently drinking a 4 year old 22 OZ bottle of all grain cream ale. I was going through my "empty" bottle stash to bottle my current 10 gallon batch of stout and came across this bottle. This is an AMAZING beer. I thought it would be a good topic to list any lost and found bottles you have found and how they tasted after an extended period of time. What have you found?

if I don't save it on purpose, it doesn't get saved.

Billy-Klubb said:

if I don't save it on purpose, it doesn't get saved.

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I understand my friend. I was not planning on finding this bottle. But OMG after 4 years it was outstanding. Anybody else found an old bottle in their "stash"?

I found a sixer of two year old dark saison...it was compared to Oerbier. Delicious.

thatjonguy said:

I found a sixer of two year old dark saison...it was compared to Oerbier. Delicious.

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Thanks for the post! My main reason for the thread. If you happen to come across an old bottle dont trash it. You may wish you had 6 more of those bastards.

clskinsfan said:

Thanks for the post! My main reason for the thread. If you happen to come across an old bottle dont trash it. You may wish you had 6 more of those bastards.

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I wish I had a whole case of them. It was on of my first ten brews (first saison) and it was an extract recipe.

I think I need to brew it again and stash it in the cellar. Won't drink it right away since I know what it will become with age.

The yeast strain I used was a Wyeast Private Collection, so whenever that strain is available again...

I found an entire case of small saison I made last summer. It's not really any better because it wasn't ever really that great, but I'm about halfway through the case. Luckily, I also found a mixed case of last year's Christmas beers. The tripels haven't changed, but the barleywines are really getting tasty. Maple syrup and brown sugar. Love it.

clskinsfan said:

I understand my friend. I was not planning on finding this bottle. But OMG after 4 years it was outstanding. Anybody else found an old bottle in their "stash"?

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I do have "stashed" a bottle of Barley Wine from '07, bottle of applejack from about the same time (maybe older), a bottle of BCBS from '08, and a bottle of Barley Wine from '09. I was hoping that when we moved here I'd find some hidden bottles of my Agave Ale, but no such luck.

Last year I found a few old bottles of what I think were supposed to be some sort of pale ale. I tasted and dumped every one of those 22 ouncers! I have learned a lot since then.

2 days ago I put some wine bottles in the closet and found a small box of Barleywine I bottled in '08. I know this was my last ever extract batch. Drank one last night. Really very good! I think you can get away with a lot more with a barleywine, but it was not as oxidized as I would have expected. The hops were gone, but it was not overly sweet. Had a raisin, toffee, caramel flavor, with a good amount of malt too. No alcohol burn or flavor that I remembered from that batch.

I wasn't as good about clarifying back then and there was a LOT of chill haze, but after pouring and letting it warm up a bit it went very clear. I'm pretty excited to brew another barleywine now. Just have to decide what flavor.

I still have bottles from a couple batches I brewed when I first got started, only because I'm too lazy to pop each one open and poor them down the drain. They were crap then and they're crap now. I'll taste one every once in a while, but they're just not good. Age has done nothing to them.

I bought some old stubbies and quart bottles from an old homebrewer a couple of weeks ago.

I found 2 quarts of Aussie Ale, and a half dozen Canadian lager in the stubbies...from 1998

They were nasty... lol...I think they were from the grocery store canned kits from back in the day.