Aging and Storage

Overview of goals: https://www.facebook.com/groups/MilkTheFunk/permalink/1640076039353937/

BEGIN ROUGH DRAFT

(In progress) For this page, Aging and Storage will refer to the conditioning and aging of beer in its final package (bottle, keg, etc.). The conditioning process includes the changes that take the beer from its state at packing to the state in which it is intended to consumed. The term aging will be used on this page to discuss changes in the conditioned beer as it is aged further. Storage conditions and their advantages and disadvantages will be discussed. Aging of beer before packaging is discussed in various brewing pages on the wiki and will not be discussed here.

For simplicity, this page will mostly refer to what is going on in a bottle, but the same changes and processes occur in other package types, albeit at different rates, and 'bottle' can be replaced with 'keg' or another final package.

Best Practices for Storage

This could be an overview for customers, retailers, and distributors. The sections below can give more technical/detailed information.

See Techniques of Cellaring below for more information.

Bottle conditioning

(in progress)

Bottle conditioning is the process and changes that take a beer at packaging time to beer that is ready to drink. This can include the development of carbonation, microbial growth, development and reprocessing of off flavors, 'bottle shock' and other changes. Bottle conditioning, at least for the initial period where carbonation is generated, is typically carried out at warmer temperatures than extended aging after the conditioning is done.

Techniques of Cellaring

Cellaring, or extended age in the bottle once the beer is ready to drink, is common for many mixed fermentation beers. Cellaring is typically carried out at cooler temperatures.

Bottles vs Kegs

Corks vs Caps

Bottle Orientation

• Brandon Jones article on corked bottle storage (verticle vs horizontal) with comments from Belgian lambic brewers.
• Pierre Tilquin explains that horizontal storage for corked bottles results in no Pellicle formation in the bottle .
• As with wine and champagne, some recommend storing beer that uses natural corks horizontal to keep them from drying out. This allows them to keep a tight seal and either horizontal or vertical for synthetic corks (it doesn't matter for synthetic corks) .
• Jeff Porn observes accelerated flavor development (good or bad) when comparing bottles that are stored horizontally versus ones stored vertically . This is also the experience of Brasserie Dupont.

Chemical Changes

Acids and Esters

Cover microbiologically driven changes: over-attenuation, Brett expression under pressure, autoylsis

• "Thoughts on Spitaels and Van Kerrebroeck et al, 2015", by Dave Janssen on Hors Catégorie Blog.

pH change in the bottle?

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0740002014002548

Phenols

Hop Compounds

IBU Degradation

Lightstruck

http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0100-40422000000100019&script=sci_arttext&tlng=es

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/j.2050-0416.2002.tb00568.x/abstract

http://www.professorbeer.com/articles/skunked_beer.html

Effects of Oxygen

Other Flavor and Non-flavor Compounds

Cover lifespan and effects of: tannins, THP (reference THP page), diacetyl, proteins, enzymes, gluten(?), effects of different levels of CO2.

Pediococcus 'sickness'

• See the Pediococcus page.

Microbial Survival and Changes

Cover what we know the about survival rate of different microbes, and connect them to the above sections if they have an impact.

See also Commercial Sour Beer Dregs Inoculation.

See Also

Additional Articles on MTF Wiki

• Packaging

MTF Facebook Discussions

• Devin Bell's facebook discussion about aging in bottles
• Discussion about how long it takes to develop carbonation

External Resources