How do commercial brewers do big beers?

alecoholic said:

The consumer ages it at home in the bottle.

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TheCarnie said:

I heard something about the larger the vessel the quicker it ages. Kind of like the old thing about kegged beer aging faster and differently than bottles.

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remilard said:

they brew it clean in the first place so there aren't any flaws to "age" out.

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devilishprune said:

Not really HOW do they make them, but how do they get them out?

I understand that if you brew a bigger beer at home, then you have to let it sit for months before it's good enough to start drinking, but I'm drinking a 10.2% right now, and it really doesn't have the same amount of alcohol warmth that I've had at 8% after a few months.

I'm assuming that brewers don't have the time to age something for several months before they distribute it, so how do they get their bigger beers out (this is my assumption) so much quicker than we can?

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Vance71975 said:

I think the thing that is being missed is that most of the Larger breweries can afford to age a really big beer before release because they have their standard brews making their profit. Utopias for example, some of the beers blended to make it were 16-19 years old.

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jfr1111 said:

Some breweries will brew their big beers as seasonals and release it once a year, leaving them a small window (1-3 months) to age it themselves before having it hit the market (Dieu du Ciel! does this). I agree that they can brew it "clean" in the first place, meaning that they don't have any flaw to age out, but even commercial big beers as a whole will tend to actually get better if the consummer sits on it for a while instead of consuming it right away. Many homebrewers can also flawlessly brew big beers (pitch rate, fermentation control), yet they still age it. Why ? Because they simply have the luxury to do so. I'm guessing that if commercial breweries who release a lot of big beers could sit on some for a whole year before handing it to the customer, they would also do it.

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remilard said:

Nobody is missing that. You are not describing the norm though. Sierra Nevada releases Bigfoot, which is quite a big beer, about a month after brewing it. It's not even a little bit hot or solventy or overly estery or phenolic or whatever. You can do that as a hombrewer too, if you want to.

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Vance71975 said:

Oh sure you can i know, i was just saying that cost wise it doesn't hurt them.
To do it on a home brew scale isn't impossible, but it is costly.But i know what you mean, it isn't hard, if you got the money to set up and brew like the pros do.

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