Mixing old beer and new beer...

[svliberte]

I just finished reading an article from the AHA website about mixing older, stronger beers with newer ones. Here's the link.

http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/attachments/0000/6021/JFzym02-Solera.pdf

The article talks about mixing beers that benefit with age, dark, complex, higher ABV levels, with beer that's freshly out of the primary. This sounds really cool, especially since the results could vary so much.
Just wondering if anyone has done this before and with what results?

There seems to be a constant thread about aging over drinking it now. As far as I'm concerned, brewing is an experiment that has been going on for a long time, so that's the point, experiment.

 

[TomOliver]

Very interesting article. Thanks for posting that!

 

[svliberte]

Yeah, seemed like a fun experiment. I'm moving in a few months, so I am not sure if I want to start something like this now, since the experiment could go on for years.

I might try a barley wine or a high gravity IPA, let it ferment, rack it to a 5 gal carboy and let it sit for 3 months, then mix it with a fresh stout or dark ale.

 

[weirdboy]

My local homebrew club is making a barrel-aged sour this year in a wine barrel. We just racked 55 gallons to the barrel a couple of weeks ago. I think we ought to do something like this with that barrel. Just rebrew the recipe once in a while, rack off 2/3 of the barrel or so and then top it off again.

 

[Revvy]

There's a great podcast on it from BasicBrewing radio, with one of our own members (Oldsock.)

December 4, 2008 - Beer Blending Experiment
Michael Tonsmeire, The Mad Fermentationist, leads James, Steve, and Andy through an exercise of blending beers together to create better ones.
http://media.libsyn.com/media/basicbrewing/bbr12-04-08blending.mp3

 

[edmanster]

Would this be considered a gueuze? Or is that mainly wild lambics?

 

[svliberte]

hmmm, not sure. i listened to the podcast, pretty cool. mad fermentologist is always good.
there seems like a million possibilities when it comes to mixing. as soon as i get going with it i will post results.

 

[Johnny9]

Very very cool. Just last week I was thinking about an experiment like this becasue I have about 2 gallons of Eng Barley Wine from Oct 09, that is simply too sweet for my taste.

I actually tested mixing it with a bottle of pale lager I had on hand at various ratios (25/75, 50/50). Very interesting.

My only problem is finding a cool storage for the keg. My options are:

1. Chest freezer where I keep my kegs currently on tap: ~40 deg F
2. Chest freezer where I ferment (temp varies widely depending on what's in there - but never higher than 68 deg F)
3. Simply in a closest somewhere in the house: ~70 deg F

I suppose either #2 or #3 would work as they would promote further fermentation, but might be a bit warm for drinking....

any ideas?

 

[SSLocal]

I did something similar, but not quite what you're explaining. Had great results. I'm relatively new to brewing and so far only do extract brewing. I made a dunkelweizen based loosely on a recipe found here, but did an all grain version - noob mistake. I mashed a 6 gallon all grain recipe in 3.5 gallons. Didn't get the conversion, obviously. But I let it go through primary completely. I then brewed an extract regular wheat beer and instead of adding the 2-2.5 gallons of plain water to my wort to bring it up to 5ish gallons after the boil, I added the messed up dunkel. The result was, honestly, one of my favorite brews so far. It was a little lighter than a dunkel, but not hazy like a straight wheat. It had banana, clove, honey, and some stonefruit flavors. Really good.