What's the longest you've ever aged a homebrew?

RIS from 2006 is getting crazy good, 2006 pumpkin beer is still crazy bad.

Cheers

 

I have not been brewing long enough to have any beer saved up for long, plus I keep drinking it. I do have two bottles for my second batch a strawberry wheat that is about nine months old, I'm afraid it probably has not held up.
I do have a friend that stopped brewing about 12 years ago and I had an abbey ale he made back then and it was amazing. I also had a chrismas beer he made back then, he had used orange peel and used too much, it was still bad.

 

4 years on a lager (forget the recipe).

This was a kit from the local brew supply store. I brewed it before we moved into our current house, and thought that I had drank all of it.

I got back into brewing last fall, and found 8 of these bottles in a box that had been sitting under a bunch of bottle boxes in our storage room in the back of the house. Certainly not tempterature controlled, it gets hot in there in the summer and cold during the winter. But the beer was much better than I remember it, except it seemed way over carbonated.

 

I just started brewing again after a relatively long hiatus. My kegerator broke, so I stopped brewing rather than bottle. There was one keg left in the kegerator, it's a pumpkin stout that I brewed for xmas 2007. There's still about 2/3 left and I haven't tried it yet, but I think it'll probably be pretty good. I'm thinking about trying it to be sure it's good and then putting it aside for this halloween/thanksgiving/xmas.

 

The last bottle of my Belgian Strong Dark Ale and my Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout Clone were finished on their 4th anniversaries.

 

I had an ESB that lasted about 18 months before I drank the last bottle. It was excellent.

The guy at my LHBS told me this weekend he had some 10 year old apfelwein that was excellent.

 

back on New Years eve,a friend brought 2 bottles of Russian Imperial stout that he found back under his basement steps that he bottled in 1992...I wish he could find more as it was absolutely FINE !!

 

I brewed a huge Stout in '99 but the Y2K bug terminally crashed it.

 

That sure looks official, Beer Inspector. I better dig that one out and send it along for testing. ;-)

 

Although it wasn't mine, I just had a bottle of vanilla mead the other night that a friend brewed in 2000. It was awesome!

As far as my own brew goes, I brewed a batch of porter around 6 years ago. The weekend I was planning to bottle it was when I met my wife, and put off bottling it until the next weekend. We ended up spending that weekend together too, so I put it off again. It was in a secondary, so I figured another couple weeks wouldn't hurt it. Well, this went on until it got put into the corner of the basement and forgotten. I just opened that carboy 2 months ago when I started brewing again!

I was expecting something funky, but it actually didn't smell/taste bad. I didn't carb it, but tried some before cleaning it out. I was expecting some serious infection or at least a ton of oxidation since the airlock water had evaporated, but it wasn't too bad. Maybe I should've bottled it, but I was too anxious to start brewing again, so it got sacrificed to the drain.

 

I plan on saving at least a 22oz or a couple of 12oz bottles from each batch. Tuck them away and drink on special occasions

 

I still have at least 24 probably more 22oz bottles of my Christmas 2006 stout.

 

Just tasted my last bottle of my first batch of Edwort's Haus Pale ale and it was awesome. I used amarillo in that batch instead of cascade and was amazed that the aroma was still very strong, as soon as I popped the top I smelled it. It had smoothed out and was just really nice. The head was much better than I remember too, strangely. It pillowed up like a belgian and left a little raft in the glass the whole way down. Very nice!

 

I had a bottle from my first batch the other day (14 months going on 15 months old now). It was brett contaminated at this point... no body, off flavor, foamy. I ended up dumping it.

Soperbrew shared a bottle of year old Bee Cave Haus Pale Ale from his library that was his first AG.. THAT was a fine brew. I was amazed the aroma and flavor held up. Unlike my old brew, his wasn't contaminated.

 

I found a bottle of stout that I brewed about 15 years ago...tasted great!
DK