After I had a beer that had been in my fridge for 4 years during the week I thought I should try one of our properly aged beers for this weeks #beersaturday which is a comp organised by
Now the aging of beers is a difficult matter, only certain beers benefit from aging or cellaring, basically big alcohol, complex beers where one factor, too much alcohol burn, too much rum from a barrel or something like that means that they are a little overpowering when new.
Essentially cellaring them will mute a lot of things, which I know sounds bad, but if you have a unbalanced beer to start with, or you just want to see how things change then cellaring could be for you.
A word of warning though – NEVER and I mean NEVER age a hop driven beer, all that crap about IPA’s and travelling to India makes people think you can do it, you shouldn’t Hops need to be fresh, the younger the better with hops.
You also need somewhere smart to cellar, we are lucky to have a underground carpark and storage area in our building and down there we the temp is constant, which is exactly what you need, not cold (so not a fridge) but a constant 10-15 degrees will work.
So on to the beer, this is a Double stout from Epic Brewing in New Zealand, it was brewed back in 2012 so has 5 years age on it. A lot has happened in 5 years, back then Epic was one of the 2 or 3 go to breweries in New Zealand, they produced near perfect beers everytime. Luke from Epic was even so famous he brewed with Dogfish Head, producing Portamarillo, and appeared in brewmasters.
They are still an amazing brewery, but there are now 15 breweries in New Zealand up there with them.
So how does this 5 year old beer taste after all these years?
It pours jet black with a big tan head that ends like ice cream, slowly poring out of the bottle. The smell as I was pouring was a kick in the head, like someone set fire to a treacle factory.
The mouthfeel is silky. The taste isn't as strong as the smell, in fact it feels almost gentle, not sweet at all and it sits in the back of the throat – It does make me wonder how big this was in it’s day, my guess would be overpowering.
Overall this beer is very enjoyable, the flavours are all subtle and the alcohol (7.7%) is pretty well hidden, veryenjoyable, probably should have be left for about two years rather than five.
This is probably a sign that I should drink the stuff in the cellar a bit more often. Stay tuned for more tales from the Cellar