Shelf Life

I know this will greatly depends on the variety of beer brewed.
Any way to guess/formulate the shelf life of bottled home brew?
Is it best to bottle and leave warm, or does it need to stay cooled?

help would be great!
What I have working is (my very first batch ever) White House Honey Ale, and I didn’t get enough bottles to save. But it might be cool to save one bottle from each brew and crack them much later.

Most darker (maltier) beers do well with age, and I have seen Imperial Stouts bottle conditioned for a couple of years. The hoppier beers are better fresher as hop flavor can fade with time.

FWIW, I do this same thing… save a bottle or six from each batch, usually in the basement (cool and dark) just to see what will happen as they “mature”. For some brews it makes all the difference in the world.

+1 for what DrGonzo said.

Shelf life will definitely increase with cold storage. It can really help with beers made to emphasize fresh hop flavor and aroma. Darker beers more dependent on malt character will last considerably longer at room temp (edit: than the more hop focused beers).

Jerry

I brewed for a few years, got out of it for too many years and now I am back at it. I have a few bottles in the fridge from batches that I made the 1st time around. My best guess is they are from early 2009 and I am guessing they are a brown ale of some sort. I had one about a month ago and it really wasn’t too bad. I plan on drinking the others to see what they are and how they taste.

[quote=“DrGonzo”]Most darker (maltier) beers do well with age, and I have seen Imperial Stouts bottle conditioned for a couple of years. The hoppier beers are better fresher as hop flavor can fade with time.
[/quote]

Ironically hops act as a preservative and help a beer age well.
I have some bottles from a batch of British barleywine that I brewed on 12/12/12 and it is still really good.

[quote=“Rookie L A”][quote=“DrGonzo”]Most darker (maltier) beers do well with age, and I have seen Imperial Stouts bottle conditioned for a couple of years. The hoppier beers are better fresher as hop flavor can fade with time.
[/quote]

Ironically hops act as a preservative and help a beer age well.
I have some bottles from a batch of British barleywine that I brewed on 12/12/12 and it is still really good.[/quote]

+1
I have Barleywine/Burtons that were bottled 5 years ago (and brewed a year before bottling) that taste fantastic.
FWIW, being a traditionalist I also routinely age my IPAs for up to a year…they have plenty of hop bitterness because I factor the aging into the recipe, and there’s good hop aroma since I dry hop them later in the process (I’m still looking for a source of good aroma fraction hop oil). No green hop 'flavors" due to the aging (which is fine with me, since with IPA it’s more the bitterness, aroma, and a nice hint of malt balance that I’m after and the green hop taste of most American IPA is not to my liking).

In the end, it all just boils down to preferences. But as mentioned earlier in the thread it’s the strong, dark brews (whether extra hoppy or not) that can last for years (and by and large, improve with time).

if my next beer is a Stout… once it’s bottled should i give it 2 weeks and throw it in a fridge? or should i just leave it boxed in a basement indefinitely and move it to the fridge once it’s ready to be enjoyed?

I would like to get yo the point were I brew stouts and porters for next year and drink last years this year.

Basement storage would be the best. Give your beers at least two to three days chilling time before drinking. Stouts may need to be warmed up a little after refrigerating. Typical kitchen refrigerator temperatures are too low to really enjoy the flavors of dark beers.

Very few beers will be good after only two weeks of bottle conditioning even though that is what is in the recipe.

Indefinitely is a long time to store beer even under the best conditions. If you have a couple of beers every once in a while you will sense when they have reached their peak. Then refrigerate and enjoy more often.

I agree a porter needs to be drunk warmer.

@brew_cat:
It’s a goal well worth shooting for. And for some beer/ale styles, “freshness” is not only overrated, but downright undesirable (although how overrated or undesirable is open to individual opinion or interpretation as well as the degree of one’s allegiance to tradition) . The biggest problem I have with most commercial “craft” beer (and the primary reason I have for the most part stopped buying it and don’t even patronize the small breweries in my state) is that their production and packaging is always so rushed.

But on the homebrew level. I’ve found that It’s really actually relatively simple to reach the stage where you’ll always have properly ripened ‘stock’ ales to enjoy: just make the time available to brew more often so there’a always properly aged beer around to enjoy. Even with my bizarre and often unpredictable “show-biz” schedule, it’s really not very difficult to manage to get in a 5-6 hour brewday every few weeks.
The results are well worth the time.