How long does it take to tame a RIS?

[anotherbeerplease]

I always heard you need 6+months to tame an RIS. I am wondering why?? What is it about aging that makes the RIS taste better? Are the yeast still doing something? I just did one last month and the aroma is amazing, the taste not so much so will age it.... just would be helpful to know what is actually happening to improve the taste as time goes by.

 

[oceanic_brew]

Never made one. I don't know if you are looking for scientific answers which I do not have but I know all my beers with a large amount of roasted grains take a while to round out.

Anything I make with a lot of alcohol usually has quite the unpleasant bite to it until it ages. There's also something that happens to the body of the beer as it ages, some may thin out after a very long while but I find some beers lose their sweetness while the body becomes more round and full.

I would imagine this all applies to RIS

I'm gonna have to brew one of these aren't I?

 

[oceanic_brew]

And yeah the yeast continue to work for a long while after bottling, but I'd bet if you filtered the beer after primary it would still continue to mellow.

A great example of the mellowing of darker malts is in a lot of the dubbel recipes. The beer just doesn't seem to get that dark fruit and rum flavor until the initial almost astringent/roast like flavors mellow out and the alcohol mellows. The backdrop flavors tend to come to the forefront more and meld into one another.

I always view a beer mellowing as the same process as recording and the mixing an album. You get the main detail with the recording process as clear as you can and then through mixing you bring out the finer points and tame/mute the harshness.

 

[madscientist451]

I always heard you need 6+months to tame an RIS. I am wondering why??

What is in your recipe? Did you do a sugar addition to boost ABV?

 

[anotherbeerplease]

85% base malt, mostly 2 row, some Munich and Vienna

Then 15% Crystal and Dark/Roasted malt

Got low attenuation, only 64% but had some probs with the mash too... gonna age it and see how it comes out. Also tried to pitch more yeast, we'll see... it's still 10% abv now, again aroma is great but taste needs to "mellow" or it's a dumper

 

[RM-MN]

85% base malt, mostly 2 row, some Munich and Vienna

Then 15% Crystal and Dark/Roasted malt

Got low attenuation, only 64% but had some probs with the mash too... gonna age it and see how it comes out. Also tried to pitch more yeast, we'll see... it's still 10% abv now, again aroma is great but taste needs to "mellow" or it's a dumper

If it hasn't mellowed enough in 6 months, give it another 6 months or maybe another year. It takes time to mellow out a high alcohol dark beer but its worth the wait.:rockin:

 

[iijakii]

85% base malt, mostly 2 row, some Munich and Vienna

Then 15% Crystal and Dark/Roasted malt

Got low attenuation, only 64% but had some probs with the mash too... gonna age it and see how it comes out. Also tried to pitch more yeast, we'll see... it's still 10% abv now, again aroma is great but taste needs to "mellow" or it's a dumper

What dont you like about it? Sounds too sweet, aging isn't gonna fix that.

 

[Calder]

Try using a very attenuative yeast to get it lower. Something like 3711; easy to use and will eat thru anything. At 10% abv it will not have much, if any, errect on the flavor.

I find most beers with roast grains benefit from sitting for a while. I think the roast grains produce some very fine particles that take a long time to drop out. These give the flavor a bit of a rough edge. Once they settle, the beer is much smoother.

 

[Qhrumphf]

Aerate well with *pure oxygen* and a MASSIVE pitching rate, and directly control your fermentation temp and it really doesn't need that long. Had an 11.3% RIS reach FG in a week and serving in 3.5 weeks.

Not that there's anything wrong with aged stouts (my cellar has many). They're different than fresh, not inherently better.

 

[anotherbeerplease]

I just pitched super yeast wlp 090, will try 3711 too... would be nice to get it lower but not mandatory, otherwise will just wait a year or two, I'm sure it will be more "mellow" then. I just would like to understand more of the process of what happens when aging a beer... can we artificially accelerate it somehow or are we stuck with just waiting so many months...

 

[Devon]

If it hasn't mellowed enough in 6 months, give it another 6 months or maybe another year. It takes time to mellow out a high alcohol dark beer but its worth the wait.:rockin:

It's absolutely worth the wait. I brewed a RIS last summer. I tasted it after three months and it was insanely hot and boozy. After six it was still pretty boozy, but now it's pretty damn good.

I had thought about dumping it and I'm so glad I didn't.

 

[GHBWNY]

Can you really 'tame' an RIS? Mine is 6 months in and it's anything but tame. Gets tastier, deeper, toastier as time goes by. At 9%, not sure it ever will be 'tame'. And that's not a bad thing ;-)

 

[RM-MN]

Can you really 'tame' an RIS? Mine is 6 months in and it's anything but tame. Gets tastier, deeper, toastier as time goes by. At 9%, not sure it ever will be 'tame'. And that's not a bad thing ;-)

Give it another year or year and a half. It will calm down. Mine is pretty smooth at a year but I know it will get better.

 

[bobeer]

I've never really have needed to age any big beer for more than a month or so. I've kept a few bottles in my cellar collection just because it's fun to see where it'll go in terms of taste. Some of the flavors come and go but I think it's just a little oxidation.

 

[kh54s10]

I don't have any science. But aging definitely helps a dark high alcohol beer. Also it appears that the beer in question has not been bottled/kegged. I find that beers can change dramatically between tasting at the end of fermentation and when it is completely done and carbonated.

My RIS was very hot and harsh until over 6 months, it mellowed over the next year. It didn't make it past a year and a half so I don't know if 2 years would have been better. It didn't seem to change much between 3/4 year and 1 1/2 year of aging.

 

[anotherbeerplease]

What dont you like about it? Sounds too sweet, aging isn't gonna fix that.

Actually it's not sweet enough. I think the black malt and roasted malt are slightly overpowering, sounds like this should settle down w time though