Your oldest brew?

[mrtrav]

I have an IPA that is the last remaining bottle of my very first batch a year ago or so. Plan on keeping that one forever and never popping it.

 

[bernerbrau]

Got one bottle of my IPA, my porter, and my cider sitting in my guest bathroom. And I know my brother still has one bottle each of my first two brews. I want to try some since at least the ones my brother has are close to a year old now, but then they would be gone

My blonde biscuit is all gone, because I went through those obsessively when I found out half of them failed to carbonate significantly. That experience also turned my palate off to lighter beers for some reason.

 

[thantos]

A friend of mine's son just had his 15th Birthday, and when he was born I brewed a batch to celebrate the occasion. My friend has saved an unopened bottle all this time. 15 year old home brew, think its safe to drink?:cross:

 

[bernerbrau]

15 year old home brew, think its safe to drink?

One way to find out!!

 

[DeathBrewer]

Safe, sure. Tasty? I dunno...

 

[Killer_Robot]

As I'm pretty new to it, I don't have anything old yet. I'd keep a bottle of my first beer for posterity, but it's one of those 1 liter plastic Mr. Beer bottles, so I imagine it won't keep as long as one in glass. Still, there's my second beer at least.

 

[Poindexter]

I still have a twelve of the 888RIS I brewed Thanksgiving 2007. The hops are way past peak, but I am hanging on to see how my sanitation does. So far so good.

This summer I have put back four cases of heavyweight ales that were intentioanlly over hopped. I am hoping they come in to their own over the long dark cold winter.

I am going to go through a series of export stouts next. Most of those will be kegged with a sixer bottled on the side so I can sample without tapping.


The trick to building up inventory is to brew more than you drink ;-)

 

[loetz]

I've had a lot of very old beers. I couldn't list all of them, but...

I've done vertical tastings of Oerbiers and Stille Nacht that dated back probably eight years. Most of them held up well, but they thinned out the older they got.

I had a 2000 Guinness Special Export Stout in 2007 and it was amazing. Ditto these dates and my reaction for Westvleteren 12.

1983 Chimay that was pretty bad.

1978 Saison of some kind that tasted like medicine.

I've had a number of other aged beers, but the most interesting to try were these:

These bottles are 1950s era beers. When opened they made no noise. One is from a brewery in Cleveland, the other Detroit. The minikeg is between 10-20 years old. The bottles tasted like sorghum and penicillin. The Beck's still had some foam to it, but it tasted metallic and medicinal.

If you're really interested in aging beer, here is an interesting article:
http://beersensoryscience.wordpress.com/2010/11/15/chemistry-of-beer-aging/

I've found that some big beers are better after a couple of years, but I'm not a fan of keeping things for longer.

 

[Spartan1979]

I still have some barleywine I brewed around 1995. IIRC it was a SMaSH. I opened a bottle last year and it was fantastic. Still carbed, nice flavors, so I opened another bottle a couple of weeks later and it was bland. Nothing wrong with it, still carbed, but just not much flavor. There's still a couple left. I'll have to chill one.

 

[hipturn]

I've got a case of beer I brewed in 1986 that I just retrieved from my parents' attic.

 

[sapper-nc]

i once had a porter that i kept about 6 bottles for 4 or 5 yrs, .. one went sour but the rest were like chocolate candy bars in a bottle, the recipe was a variation of Papazian's "Goat Scrotum Ale" . The only reason they went four years is i stuck them in a corner of my house and buried them under projects and forgot about them.

Mark