Brew Tips #12: Aging
This is both a simple and complex topic. But, many people have a lot of advice on the quickest, easiest and cheapest ways to improve your beer. Recommendations range from going all grain, to tinkering with yeast to building a proper fermentation chiller.
At the end of the day, none of those are intrinsically bad ideas. But, they also tend to ignore things like complexity and cost. Yeast is a fairly cheap thing to toy with, but very complex in how it affects your beer and you can't really know how it will affect beer until you've had time to try a number of different yeasts under the same conditions.
Going all grain often means new equipment and steps and new places to screw up and fermentation chillers can be both complex and expensive.
The easiest and cheapest way to improve your beer is probably one many overlook when asked. Aging. It costs nothing and has no additional inherent complexity. Unless you have a really hop forward IPA and you like it that way aging, especially if you bottle condition (as many new to home brewing do) then your beer will likely just get better with time.
I have no qualms with cracking into them early. I do this often. But, even for a lighter beer; between primary fermentation, dry-hopping and/or secondary fermentation, carbonation and refrigerating you're probably looking at 6+ weeks before your beer is ideal. And, if you're bottle conditioning, it won't end there. Those yeast will continue to drive changes (more and more slowly over time). So, if your beer doesn't taste good, but it doesn't taste rancid/spoiled, then keep it somewhere cool and dark for a few more weeks and repeat. Chances are, with time, a lot of the flavours you didn't like originally will actually age out.
Not to question the value of other recommendations. But aging is something you can even implement with a batch which is already done.
Next thing most would say is probably controlling fermentation temperatures. Especially during the first 48-72 hours. But, chilling will probably be the topic of another post for me in the future.
At the end of the day, none of those are intrinsically bad ideas. But, they also tend to ignore things like complexity and cost. Yeast is a fairly cheap thing to toy with, but very complex in how it affects your beer and you can't really know how it will affect beer until you've had time to try a number of different yeasts under the same conditions.
Going all grain often means new equipment and steps and new places to screw up and fermentation chillers can be both complex and expensive.
The easiest and cheapest way to improve your beer is probably one many overlook when asked. Aging. It costs nothing and has no additional inherent complexity. Unless you have a really hop forward IPA and you like it that way aging, especially if you bottle condition (as many new to home brewing do) then your beer will likely just get better with time.
I have no qualms with cracking into them early. I do this often. But, even for a lighter beer; between primary fermentation, dry-hopping and/or secondary fermentation, carbonation and refrigerating you're probably looking at 6+ weeks before your beer is ideal. And, if you're bottle conditioning, it won't end there. Those yeast will continue to drive changes (more and more slowly over time). So, if your beer doesn't taste good, but it doesn't taste rancid/spoiled, then keep it somewhere cool and dark for a few more weeks and repeat. Chances are, with time, a lot of the flavours you didn't like originally will actually age out.
Not to question the value of other recommendations. But aging is something you can even implement with a batch which is already done.
Next thing most would say is probably controlling fermentation temperatures. Especially during the first 48-72 hours. But, chilling will probably be the topic of another post for me in the future.
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