I am having issues with my beer lately and am having trouble pinpointing what is going on. Recently I have been making some really tasty brews but have been noticing sort of a progressively staling taste or the beer just seems to be getting worse over time which is the opposite of what I thought would be happening. I think I might have an idea what might be happening but I know that from reading on this forum many of you might disagree which is just fine. just trying to pinpoint what techniques I should use to avoid the gradual decline of taste of my beer over time.
What I think just might be the culprit is hot side aeration... well at least part of it. Lately over the last 8 months or so I have not been one bit careful when pouring water from my kettle into the mash tun on the initial strike as well as the sparge portion. I simply heat the water, dump it into my 10 gal homedepot cooler violently and then mix the grains. I do the same when I heat the sparge water and when I recirculate. When I do this I am fully aware of the issue of hot side aeration but just dismissed it as myth from reading around the internet about it. You read stories about breweries at a much larger scale pouring their mash water from 20 feet up and their beers turn out perfectly fine. So I thought if it's only a couple feet with my set up it shouldn't matter either. Either way ever since I started doing this I have noticed that my beers often start out not bad at all to great then after a month take a downward slide. By the way I am very careful about oxidation when I bottle my beer. I avoid splashing as much as possible.
I also might think it might be an aging thing as well. I used to think that the longer you age a beer, the better it will get with time. I recently have done a little googling and using the search function to find that the majority of beers should be consumed quickly. I also read that darker beers age well. which has me confused because a beer I recently made which tasted actually awesome 2 weeks in the bottle, has gotten that stale flavor a month later and is a fairly dark beer. kind of a dark amber and is 7.7 percent which is a somewhat big beer. It's definetely not bad. just not as amazing as it was fresh 2 weeks in the bottle.
Now take another beer that I made 2 years ago when I was newer to all grain and was very careful of hot side aeration. it was a porter at about 4.5 percent alcohol and I actually didn't touch 1/3 of the beers until a year later. At that point it was the best the beer had ever tasted and they went through many temperature changes throughout that year of aging. than again it was a dark porter and dark beers are better at aging. But still the previous beer was dark and high in alcohol.
So I guess what I'm trying to understand is, based off everyone's experience, what are a couple things you all look for when deciding when to age a beer. I know I've heard that dark beers as well as boozy beers should be aged but is that what aged beers are limited to? I know many light colored beers such as belgian golden strongs and tripels benefit from aging. I know my low gravity porter benefited quite a bit as well.
And say you're making a big beer and you went through all of the precautions to reduce off flavors such as making a big starting and keeping the fermentation temperatures under control. Would it be best to age those beers in the fridge once fully carbonated in the bottle to reduce the chance of long term oxidation? I've read this is what you want to do with just about any other beer.
Sorry for the bombardment of questions. Just trying to keep my beers tasty!
What I think just might be the culprit is hot side aeration... well at least part of it. Lately over the last 8 months or so I have not been one bit careful when pouring water from my kettle into the mash tun on the initial strike as well as the sparge portion. I simply heat the water, dump it into my 10 gal homedepot cooler violently and then mix the grains. I do the same when I heat the sparge water and when I recirculate. When I do this I am fully aware of the issue of hot side aeration but just dismissed it as myth from reading around the internet about it. You read stories about breweries at a much larger scale pouring their mash water from 20 feet up and their beers turn out perfectly fine. So I thought if it's only a couple feet with my set up it shouldn't matter either. Either way ever since I started doing this I have noticed that my beers often start out not bad at all to great then after a month take a downward slide. By the way I am very careful about oxidation when I bottle my beer. I avoid splashing as much as possible.
I also might think it might be an aging thing as well. I used to think that the longer you age a beer, the better it will get with time. I recently have done a little googling and using the search function to find that the majority of beers should be consumed quickly. I also read that darker beers age well. which has me confused because a beer I recently made which tasted actually awesome 2 weeks in the bottle, has gotten that stale flavor a month later and is a fairly dark beer. kind of a dark amber and is 7.7 percent which is a somewhat big beer. It's definetely not bad. just not as amazing as it was fresh 2 weeks in the bottle.
Now take another beer that I made 2 years ago when I was newer to all grain and was very careful of hot side aeration. it was a porter at about 4.5 percent alcohol and I actually didn't touch 1/3 of the beers until a year later. At that point it was the best the beer had ever tasted and they went through many temperature changes throughout that year of aging. than again it was a dark porter and dark beers are better at aging. But still the previous beer was dark and high in alcohol.
So I guess what I'm trying to understand is, based off everyone's experience, what are a couple things you all look for when deciding when to age a beer. I know I've heard that dark beers as well as boozy beers should be aged but is that what aged beers are limited to? I know many light colored beers such as belgian golden strongs and tripels benefit from aging. I know my low gravity porter benefited quite a bit as well.
And say you're making a big beer and you went through all of the precautions to reduce off flavors such as making a big starting and keeping the fermentation temperatures under control. Would it be best to age those beers in the fridge once fully carbonated in the bottle to reduce the chance of long term oxidation? I've read this is what you want to do with just about any other beer.
Sorry for the bombardment of questions. Just trying to keep my beers tasty!
