Is There a Science to Aging Beer?

Some beers develop in interesting and pleasant ways as they age -- but it's a science experiment with a lot of variables. Learn how to embark on the art and science of aging beer in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
brain Stuff, Lauren bog Obam. Here, a cold, fresh beer
is tasty at all, but have you ever tried one
that's perfectly aged in a beer seller? That's right. Just
like wine collectors age their wine, more brew enthusiasts are
dabbling in the art of aging beer. In some cases,

(00:23):
the multi year old beer tastes subtly better. In other
cases it's entirely undrinkable. That's the fun of this increasingly
popular hobby. You the beer ager, become part of the
beer production process. Ingredients in certain beers can change with age,
giving beer collectors the freedom to play with flavors and
tweak beers to their liking. But we spoke with Eric Dunaway,

(00:45):
lead beer buyer for Jungle Gym's international market, which sells
more than four thousand different types of beer in southern Ohio.
He said, the beers we want to age are beers that,
for one reason or another, may develop in interesting ways
as time goes on. Multiply vers may change or develop,
Fermentation flavors may increase over time, and if the beer

(01:05):
is in fact barrel aged, that may become more apparent
when bottle aged. True beer aging is more than simply
throwing beer on a shelf and forgetting about it. It's
a science. It takes practice, experimentation, and the willingness to
mess up and start over again. That said, there are
some ground rules when it comes to aging beer. It's

(01:26):
best to avoid aging hoppy beers like I. P. A
S because hops are quite volatile. Dunaway explained the aroma
and flavoring that hops provide to a beer are actually
a result of the most fragile elements of the hops.
The hops will be the first thing to sort of
fall apart in the beer. You should drink these beers
as fresh as possible. The beers that do age well
fall under the wild beer's category. This includes anything aged

(01:49):
by wild organisms think Flanders, reds Lambix, and American wild ales.
That's because those wild bacteria and yeasts bring interesting things
to the party, and they're already a little funky to
begin with. Multi beers like quads, barley wines, and imperial
stouts are also good candidates for aging because those malts
can develop in interesting ways. Sours are also good candidates

(02:10):
because they tend to get more sour as they age.
The beer will change depending on several things. It's style, complexity,
and flavors. Some beers will become more dry, while others
will taste yeastier and become more complex. Alcohol content plays
apart two, and the higher the alcohol content, the more
likely a beer is to maintain its original characteristics or

(02:32):
to develop well over time. I think seven percent alcohol
bi volume or higher. But all that being said, aging
even a great candidate beer, is tricky. According to Dunaway,
there's no hard and fast rule for when an aging
beer is ready to be consumed. It comes down to
trial error and unfortunately a lot of wasted beer. Dunaway said,

(02:53):
if all you want to do is drink a tasty beer,
then there's no need to age beer at all. Just
drink all the fresh beer you want. The purpose of
aging beer is to gain a better understanding of how
beer works, and beer aging is like a grown up
science experiment. Dunaway recommends buying multiple bottles of the same beer,
drinking one fresh bottle, then logging notes about the fresh

(03:14):
one so you can revisit and compare tastes with the
other aged bottles in the future. He said, if you
only buy one bottle, of something and you age it
for two years, while it might taste awesome, but you
have no idea if it changed or not, or if
it changed for the worse. And this beer log doesn't
have to be pen and paper. Yes, there's an app
for that. Beer. Seller List and seller h Q capitalize

(03:37):
on the beer aging trend with user friendly interfaces that
make beer organizing easy. You can add personalized beer reviews
and scan in new brewis with the upc to keep
tabs on what's working and what's not. Some d i
Y beer collectors swear by color coding methodologies, using specific
stickers for each year to track when brewis were purchased
and more importantly, when they're ready for drinking. Unfortunately, there's

(04:01):
no set signs for when an aged beer is ready.
You can age some beer for months, some beer for
years and even decades, but Dunaway does have a few
timeline tips to keep in mind. Quote. Among the styles
of beer that are age worthy, some are more age
worthy than others. If you have a Belgian Triple that's
two years old, I wouldn't think anything of that. It's
probably still drinking great, but I don't think it will

(04:22):
last a decade On the other hand, I've had English
barley wines that were fifteen years old and we're still fantastic.
Just like wine, aged beer needs to be kept in
mild conditions, not too hot, not too cold. The latter
slows down or halts the aging process. Instead of stowing
bottles on their sides, like many wine collectors, you should
store beer bottles upright to avoid unwanted flavor manipulations. Dunaway said,

(04:47):
if you turn it on its side, all of that
yeast is going to settle along the entire side of
the bottle instead of being concentrated at the bottom. This
changes the surface ratio of how much beer is exposed
to the yeast. You can end up with some weird
things where the yeast starts eating sugars that it otherwise wouldn't.
You end up with bottles that are overcarbonated or take
on weird fermentation flavors, And dear listener, I can tell

(05:10):
you that one is correct from the personal experience of
aging a festive ale that wound up tasting like a
fur net. But hey, even a climate controlled seller apparently
has nothing on the ocean floor. In Fittish divers uncovered
crates of intact wine and beer from a two year
old shipwreck on the floor of the Baltic Sea. The result,

(05:31):
the wine tasted fresh with clear acidity, and the beer
frothed up perfectly, indicating that the yeast was somehow still alive.
Today's episode was written by Stephanie Vermilion and produced by
Tyler Clay. Brain Stuff is a production of iHeart Radio's
How Stuff Works. For more in this and lots of
other fresh topics, visit our home planet, how stuff Works

(05:53):
dot com. And for more podcasts from my heart Radio,
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