Best Old Ale

Especially when it's almost 20 years old. Still have a couple of bottles of batch 1589, bottled on Dec. 22, 1994

 

I don't shoot unarmed people. But part of the reason for the confusion is because Old Peculier is darker than it once was without its once typical purple hue & complexity.

 

funny you say that ...

... when I was in college (1994-6), I thought Old Peculier was a "bitter" or at least in the same family as Samuel Smith's Old Brewery Pale Ale. It tasted a bit closer to that in my mind.

Now it's much darker than what I remember. Of course, my memory probably sucks.

Anyway, thanks for not shooting ...

 

Yep, definitely darker than it was about 25 years ago.

 

Go back to the 1840's and 1850's and in London the names were X, XX, XXX, XXXX and XXK, XXXK, XXXXK. XXXXK is another way of saying XXXX Old. Inside the brewhouse the beer in that advertisement might well have been called XXXXK.

Of course beer for ageing needed protection. They didn't want the beer to get infected with bacteria and spoil. They were aiming for (although they didn't understand the process at the time) a long, slow Brettanomyces secondary fermentation. The British forms of Brettanomyces don't really sour a beer, they add maybe just a touch of tartness. Brettanomyces can live with heavy hopping, bacteria can't.

 

So unlike vatted porter, tartness was considered undesirable the XXXXK/Old/Stock. And thank you for clearing up my confusion about the naming used in the ad.

 

Vatted Porter wouldn't have been very sour either. That's not what you get from British strains of Brettanomyces. I can be pretty certain about this because I've drunk plenty of Courage Russian Stout which has a Brettanomyces secondary fermentation. Even after 20 years, it just has a little of tartness. And I've seen analyses of 19th century Stouts which just had a little acidity.

 

100% Cuir

 

The hopping rate of some of these beers seems phenomenal , even in these days of uber hopped IPAs.