kanzimonson
Well-Known Member
I've been getting pretty obsessed with fresh beer lately. I use English ale yeast for most of my ales and can usually get my average gravity beers in kegs within 6-10 days. Of course, they always benefit from some aging but I like to taste that evolution of flavor.
Until I started kegging, I never noticed the extreme drop off of hoppiness in the first month of a beer's life. I made an India Brown Ale that had so much hop flavor/aroma that you could barely tell it was a brown ale. Then, a month later the hops dropped out a bunch, the flavors blended, and it became a very balanced beer. It was not quite as hoppy, but overall it was better thanks to aging.
So my question is: how do y'all approach aging in your beer? I'm not asking for how long you do it, I'm really wondering about if you take aging into account when you brew a beer?
For example, I could have brewed this IBA with a little less finishing hops, and it might have achieved balance a little sooner. However, a month later it may have seemed under-hopped. And this is not to mention the fact that the malt flavors also take time to age.
Partly I ask this for competition purposes (timing your brewing to enter competition at the peak of flavor), but also for inventory purposes. I freakin love IPAs and the fresher and more vibrant the hop character, the better. So if I brew 10gal of IPA, and I don't even tap the second keg until 2 months later - am I going to be disappointed?
Until I started kegging, I never noticed the extreme drop off of hoppiness in the first month of a beer's life. I made an India Brown Ale that had so much hop flavor/aroma that you could barely tell it was a brown ale. Then, a month later the hops dropped out a bunch, the flavors blended, and it became a very balanced beer. It was not quite as hoppy, but overall it was better thanks to aging.
So my question is: how do y'all approach aging in your beer? I'm not asking for how long you do it, I'm really wondering about if you take aging into account when you brew a beer?
For example, I could have brewed this IBA with a little less finishing hops, and it might have achieved balance a little sooner. However, a month later it may have seemed under-hopped. And this is not to mention the fact that the malt flavors also take time to age.
Partly I ask this for competition purposes (timing your brewing to enter competition at the peak of flavor), but also for inventory purposes. I freakin love IPAs and the fresher and more vibrant the hop character, the better. So if I brew 10gal of IPA, and I don't even tap the second keg until 2 months later - am I going to be disappointed?