In the beer geek community there is an assertion that beer ages well. Not just some beer but a lot of different kinds of beer. This is my single largest disagreement with a large percentage of the beer geek community. Sure there are some beers out there that age wonderfully but there are a vastly more that turn into utter crap after a bit of age. Generally any beer that showcases hops is going to not be very good after a few months. This is nowhere more apparent then with Imperial IPAs. The bigger and badder the worse they age. Yuck.
Even with beers that are intended to age, oxidation is such a huge problem that chances are greater than not that some of that super-rare-uber-ager that you have squirreled away in some dark closet is going to smell and taste of wet cardboard when you finally get around to opening it. All this from a guy that has a couple hundred bottles sitting in my basement. Unfortunately for me all this beer represents a serious chunk of change and more often than not I am disappointed with those aged beers that I do finally open. However, there are exceptions, and when a beer does age well it can be phenomenal and far outclass an un-aged sample of the same beer.
My personal favorite style for aging is Belgian Quad. Pretty much every quality Quad that I have had aged has held up extremely well and developed a new level of complexity and enjoyability as compared to unaged sample. As I mentioned earlier my least favorite style for aging is Imperial IPA. Everyone that I have ever had with some age on it, is awful. They become very alcoholic, sweet, and generally unpalatable. This makes sense given that the whole point of an IIPA is to showcase hops and hop aroma and flavor fade as beer ages.
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One Comment
I completely agree. It’s a similar debate regarding the pairing of beer with food. Like yourself, I prefer having beer stand on its own — however, a nice IPA seems to go well with spicy dishes. Even then, the beer itself takes a back seat to the food and becomes mostly forgettable.