how to replicate complex bottle aging on large volumes

[sean-arthur]

Ok, here's the rub: this works in the bottle, but how to do it in five or ten gallon batches? Hopefully a scientist can explain the science.

So, I make a beer, any beer, any style, any method. I brew in 5 gallon batches. I bottle in flip top 750 ml or 1 litre bottles, and of course store out of the sun, and of course take great pains to sanitize.

After a month in the bottles, the beer is tops, as expected. However, I also sample as soon as the beer in the bottles clears.

One of the reasons I use flip tops is because I hate drawing ANY sediment from the bottle, but I also passionately hate dumping 10 % or more of every bottle, and with flip tops its possible to snap the top back on and put an unfinished bottle in the fridge to clear again.

This beer, a part bottle, never tastes as good as when first decanted, as expected. some Oxygen has enter the bottle.

But I what I do is this: I immediately snap the top back on after the pour and put in the fridge. When I have enough part bottles, I pour them into a single bottle that I have just decanted.

I don't do anything special. Don't use a funnel, don't sanitize, just pour four or five part bottles into the just opened bottle (that has beer left in the bottom...).

One thing to note is that even in the fridge these part bottles always have some 'pop' to them, some CO2, when opened again.

I leave a very small space in the neck, perhaps three centimeters. Then I vigorously shake the bottle and put it back in the fridge until it clears, usually about a week or so.

At this point, the beer is anywhere from a month to six weeks from original bottling. Because it has been in the fridge, it has been laagering. Since I tend to slightly over-carbonate my beers there might be some protection from oxidization.

The resulting beer is heads and above more complex than the original beer!!

The mouth feel is rich and smooth and complex. The carbonation is light, as expected, like an old fashioned English draft ale. The malt side has lost any edginess, or that odd off flavour that's hard to get rid of if you are using malt syrup extracts and the hop flavours are mellowed and better blended.

These improvements are noticeable in all styles, although more prominent in darker ales.

what is remarkable to me is that the same beer, at week six or later, in the original bottling and stored in the fridge does not have these same characteristics, and is generally starting to head on the downside, losing that sparkle and freshness of a peak bottled beer. Although as expected some heavy gravity beers continue to evolve positively...

I have tried also using less priming sugar, and even true krauzing. I have left the beer in the secondary longer, have tried laagering in the primary, have tried racking several times in the secondary, but its not the same.

I have left pale ale in quart bottles (capped) for six months just above or at freezing (the beer did not freeze). This beer came closest to the texture and smoothness of what I described, but not quite as good mouth feel, and much less malty.

So, chemically, what is happening? And knowing this, how to replicate in the Homebrew process, pre bottling, so that the bottled beer, at week four or six, has the same characteristics?

Or, is this not possible except in the bottle any other way, but do-able if kegging? I have had pints of English style ales from micro breweries that were the very first pints drawn from a fresh, just delivered and tapped keg that had these characteristics.

I'd like to know what insights are out there!

Cheers,

Sean Arthur.

 

[biertourist]

Oh my; what an explosion of ideas. Where to even begin?

I can recognize someone who externally processes information as I do the same, but if you'd like to get a focused and useful response you're going to need to try to summarize this better to focus on your main points / main questions.

Please ask your question again with at LEAST half as many words (ideally 1/3-1/4 as many). Leave the long post for additional context but clarify what you're doing, and what you like about it that you're trying to get in a full batch.

I'm particularly confused by the seeming contradiction where you say that the beer doesn't get any better than when you first open it, but it seems that you're saying that after the opened bottle sits for a few days is actually when you like it most...


Adam

 

[biertourist]

Having said all that I'll try to take a rough stab at it anyway:

It sounds like you are mimicking much of what happens with real British Cask Ale with your practice of half-empty bottle-conditioned beers and many of the flavor and mouth feel characteristics are also typically the types of descriptions that you'd get from a beer on cask vs. keg.


You are certainly getting lower carbonation levels and a bit of oxygenation although some early oxygenation products can actually enhance taste. Conditioning on the yeast also helps as the yeast will take up some of the introduced oxygen. Simply allowing time for settling also helps mellow the flavor and make it more malt-forward as some of the hop oils cling to yeast cell walls and fall out of solution and proteins + tannins complexes also slowly settle out, so those types of reactions can explain why you say the flavor improves after bottling after a few weeks of storage.

-You have an early phase of conditioning (not sure about warm or cold conditioning in your process) that improves the flavor -the yeast continue converting some of the more harsh tasting fermentation by-products into more mellow and integrated flavors (this process is accelerated under warm conditioning) and natural sedimentation (which is accelerated under cold conditioning) of yeast and unwanted particles / molecules.

Then you're simply dropping the CO2 levels which make the beer less "sharp", and slightly less acidic as the CO2 comes out of solution and helps the focus to move from hops to malt; if your process involves the temperature warming from fridge temps then you're also going to see increased flavor levels and a move towards the malty and increased mouth feel.

-Again, a lot of what you seem to be talking about is straight from the British Cask Ale playbook. You can start looking into replicating many of the Cask Ale processes particularly on the conditioning and serving side and you'll probably end up where you want, but you're probably going to have to start kegging to make it happen... If you allow your keg to draw in outside air, it's going to go off in a number of DAYS, so you either need to deal with the expense of cask breathers (which still only give you maybe 7-10 days serving time) or you can simply dial your CO2 pressure WAY down.


A lot of this is simply reading between the lines and a highly educated guess; if you better focus your questions you'll certainly get to better answers faster.


Adam

 

[sean-arthur]

Ah! Thanks Adam. Gives me answers and a direction to work on. Sorry about the long post, and thanks for reading it through. kegging is my inevitable future, and actual casking a holy grail. Reminds me that there's a chapter on that in Dave Line's Big Book of Brewing. I confess, I enjoy experimentation, and not so much replication.

Here's another idea: Irreproducible beers. Example: save the sludge from the bottom of the fermenter and secondary for three successive brews. put in 2 ltr pet bottles in the fridge until the last is collected and then combine all in a small carboy and let clear. carefully decant from the humongous layer of sludge, bottle in 2 litre bottles individually primed with a teaspoon of dextrose. sometimes is spectacular, sometimes is brash, but cannot be reproduced. It's an adventure!