10.3% in bottles 5 months...

[davidg410]

Brewed a 4-hour-boil Old Ale this past summer that hit 10.3%. I crashed her out pretty good before bottling. Let them sit for 5 months and only had the slightest gas relief confused sound when opening a bottle. Just enough co2 to prevent oxidation, but not enough to carb.

Opened all the bottles and added some champagne yeast, purged with co2 and re-capped. Here we are 23 days later and we are carb'd perfectly.

Question I have is... Do you think the 5 months of aging with the smallest amount of co2 helped develop the flavors like it would if it was fully carb'd up from the get go?

Tastes great to me, and nothing like a green beer at all. Just wondering if anyone has had this happen and then tasted the beer 6 months/1 year + down the road and noticed a huge difference?

 

[iijakii]

Beer doesnt have to be carbed for aging.

 

[andrewf1985]

Ive got a 9% belgian which i made late 2014. Drank it young and it wasnt appreciable at all. Very hot, no balance, didnt enjoy it so i hid it up. Pulled a bottle out over the summer, was slowly getting there with the balance but very over carbed. Luckily theyre in flip tops so spent the time degassing and as a bottles got to the correct carb (not pulling up the bottom and being a 1/2 glass of foam) i tried them and theyre so much better. The heats gone, the flavours are balanced. Its a nice beer to drink. Well worth the wait. I have a tripel im doing the same with. Made it early last year, will be perfect for easter. I think the time has helped your beer, the carbonation wont play a part on that. Wait even longer and you may find its even better

 

[davidg410]

Beer doesnt have to be carbed for aging.

Based on the taste of what's in my hand, I'd agree. Just never had a batch in bottles in 6 years that didn't carb up on first go around. Curious on carbonic acid effects...

 

[JonM]

Funny you should ask. I did pretty much the same thing in December, 2012 (although I boiled for a mere 3.5 hours).

I still have a bunch left and I even had one outside while shoveling last weekend.

They continue to get smoother and better. Age is a good thing with Beers like that.

 

[davidg410]

Funny you should ask. I did pretty much the same thing in December, 2012 (although I boiled for a mere 3.5 hours).

I still have a bunch left and I even had one outside while shoveling last weekend.

They continue to get smoother and better. Age is a good thing with Beers like that.

Did you have to open bottles and re-pitch?

 

[JonM]

Did you have to open bottles and re-pitch?

Well, I keg carbed the Old Ale and then bottled with a counterpressure filler, so I guess it's not exactly the same.

I did, however, do a wee heavy that took 8 months or so to carbonate naturally. I also did a RIS that took 6+ months to carb naturally, and that was with a fresh pitch of 05 at bottling.

 

[BGBC]

I'm in a similar situation with an 11% quad that had no carb after 6+ months. I uncapped a 6 pack, reyeasted with EC-1118, and recapped. I waited about 6 weeks to try one and it was perfectly carbed. I still have to go back and repeat the process with the rest of the batch.

It's only been a couple weeks since I tried that first reyeasted bottle, so I don't know about extended aging, but I think it will only continue to get better with age.

 

[davidg410]

I'm in a similar situation with an 11% quad that had no carb after 6+ months. I uncapped a 6 pack, reyeasted with EC-1118, and recapped. I waited about 6 weeks to try one and it was perfectly carbed. I still have to go back and repeat the process with the rest of the batch.

It's only been a couple weeks since I tried that first reyeasted bottle, so I don't know about extended aging, but I think it will only continue to get better with age.

I did 59 bottles with CBC-1 and 1 bottle (that I randomly found a day later) with EC-1118. The EC-1118 is the one I popped and it's perfect. Hopefully the CBC-1 did the same trick. I'll be popping one of those later today to test.

 

[blizz81]

Based on the taste of what's in my hand, I'd agree. Just never had a batch in bottles in 6 years that didn't carb up on first go around. Curious on carbonic acid effects...

Call me a negative nancy, but I think at best what you'll find here is some very questionable conjecture from an extremely specific situation. ie, I brewed a big, malty beer made for aging, and somehow half of the bottles carb'd initially, and the other half were entirely flat after 6 months, so I popped them and re-pitched, and 4 weeks later those ones carb'd fine...and wow, the flavor changes from day 30 to 6 months in the normally carbed bottles were a lot different than the flavor changes in the bottles that initially didn't carb but now are!

There would be questions such as were all bottles created equally (in the example above, obviously no), did the beer bulk age first or was the aging to be done in bottles, were all bottles the same level of cleanliness, did some bottles have more oxidation or perhaps more oxidized beer from prior exposure to oxygen than others, was the priming sugar mixed perfectly between all bottles. Less scientific proof of carbonic acid's effect on flavor changes, we would also be left up to subjective palate discriminations.

Things to ponder after 2 or 3 old ales. Or just shrug and choose iijakii's reasonable conclusion.