Ancient Irish Red

[Arcanicity]

Hey all. I just got back into homebrewing after a five year hiatus. While digging out my bottles to sanitize them for my current brew (a pumpkin ale) I came across an entire case of an Irish Red from the last batch I had bottled years ago. It had been sitting in a box and had followed us through a house move, gotten buried, and forgotten.

Needing bottles within the next two days, and thinking there was no way the red would still be good after five years, I prepared to pour it all down the drain. Then I noticed that it still smelled really good. So I decided it wouldn't hurt to taste one first. It was awesome. What had started out as an easy drinking Irish Red had matured into a wonderful beer of chocolaty, malty goodness. There was barely any hop character left at all (there wasn't much to begin with), but it had an awesome clean finish and the head retention was amazing. The foam just sat there like a mousse through the whole drink.

I would have expected this kind of maturation from a Belgian Dubbel or a barley wine, but not an Irish Red. It turned out that most of the case was still good. Only a couple of them were skunked. I gave a few to my friends and they were also blown away.

Anyone else have a cool 'found treasure' story?

 

[RM-MN]

Not quite the same but I don't drink a lot and I like to brew so some of my beers are in the bottle for some time. The one that has done the best was a stout that made it to 2 years before I drank the last. I should have saved more of it for a longer period.

 

[unionrdr]

I had this sort of epiphany recently. My dampfbier & Belgian saison were OK till they were in the bottles a couple of months. At that point, the flavors got way better than they were at 3-4 weeks. Funny how an average gravity style will perform like that. Even my Irish red got a different, tasty character after a time. Weirder yet, the hop flavors & bittering in it improved for some reason. Odd but good!

 

[Warthaug]

Many, many, many years ago I brewed my first barleywine - to be honest, I was a young university student and was more interested in the alcohol content than the style...

Anyways, two weeks in the primary,another 3 in the secondary and a couple weeks in the bottle made something undrinkable (as anyone familiar with 90's brewing methods would expect). So it got shoved into my parents basement where it sat for nearly a decade. Fast-forward to the 2000's and my parents are moving, and while packing up the basement we found several cases of the BW. More on a lark I decided I would try one - to this day, it is one of the better beers I've brewed. The unpalatable mess of yeast off-flavours and bad malt balance mellowed and blended over the years, producing what was a far too drinkable beer for something at ~11% ABV.

I still dream of that beer - sadly, I wasn't smart enough to hold onto a few bottles for later testing. We did have one hell of a moving-in party for my folks though.

Bryan

 

[wmcc75]

I found a Belgian pale that sat for about a year. Was one of the first recipes I made up on my own, what at first was almost an embarrassment is now a bragging point.