bcbvs and king henry

Deschutes would disagree with you. I would say the same for early batches of BCBS, when they were aged for a strict 100 days and not to taste as they are now.

 

That's one exception, and I'm not convinced that it's not marketing. Mirror Mirror and The Stoic were awful on their "drink after" dates, for example. I felt that Abyss '10 and '11 were better fresh than aged. Obviously, there's a huge personal component in addition to whatever business motives exist.

Anyway, the point is that people treat "the brewer's intentions" very differently when it comes to infection vs. aging, and I'm curious as to the origins of that cognitive dissonance.

 

Had a King Henry on New years..not as good as it was fresh..
Had Vanilla as well. I thought that was holding up well... my opinion of course..

 

Because no one ever wants to believe that their special bottle is actually infected...rather, they would much more prefer to convince themselves that their special bottle is going to taste significantly better down the road than the day they bought it because they've been brainwashed to think exactly that.

 

Vanilla came out years ago, supplies are probably low. Also, I had one recently and it sucked. Not worth the ammo.

 

File under total opinion and utter rubbish.

 

That's one of the most moronic thing I've heard on here! A fortified wine doesn't improve with age? A monster and boozy stout doesn't improve with age as the booziness mellows?

Fact: When some beers are young, some flavors and characteristics can be much stronger and more distinct than others. As time allows those characteristics to fade, it brings other characteristics to the forefront making a more balanced and complex flavor profile.

 

If this the most moronic thing you have read on here, you need do do some more reading.

I suppose it depends on how you quantify "almost none", if your taking it as 1 in a million, then yes seems like a overly strong statement, not to mention taste is subjective. I suppose if someone likes oxidized beer they can say most beer is ageable, but in reality with beer or wine very few improve with age,

Beer sources on aging are very difficult to come by, but suffice it to say it would be a lower % than wine.

 

Yea I was being dramatic about "The Most Moronic"
The reason the percentage is so low on cellar able wine is because there are far too many wineries producing far too many wines. The majority of wine, like beer is made for everyday drinking by the lay person. I think a very small % if wines should be cellared and believe the same with beer.

I kind of jumped the gun on my response thinking he said Nothing improves with age. As it was "Almost Nothing" I guess I agree. In my experience I have found that Big Imp. Stouts and Sours/Wilds are much more suitable for aging and development and Barleywines are not.

 

I'm pretty sure Goose Island notes on their website and bottles that KH and BCBVS will develop in the bottle for up to 5 years. I know develop does not necessarily mean get better, but they made the beer and intend for some bottles to be aged.

 

This is one of those topics where I just don't bother. The thing is that someone is going to think that any given beer "gets better" with age, even if the vast, vast majority of people disagree. And there are plenty of people who don't give much thought to it and who age things and then they're "fine" or "interesting" so suddenly they're suitable for aging, even if, again, the vast majority (or even the people themselves) would say they got worse.

Besides, once the guy above actually read what I said he agreed with me. Shockingly, I never made an absolute statement because you can't here. But most beer won't improve with age (to most people) and so the general rule is to drink it fresh. (And I would never say that there aren't good candidates out there, lambics, some barleywines/stouts, etc. that many/most people will like with age. Gueuze, especially, can get pretty magical after a few years.)

Incidentally, I think that the responses I've gotten so far are a good exhibit A for the case that BA has a boner for aging. The "cellar pics" full of low-ABV, pale beers can be exhibit B.

 

what should be hilarious, to anyone paying attention, is that you're all saying flavors of the same thing.

 

I had Vanilla for the first time at New Year's. It was very good, but I got hardly any vanilla taste. It was a like a slightly sweeter version of regular BCBS. Also, I thought it was slightly thinner than regular BCBS. I enjoyed it a ton, but it certainly didn't fall in my top-10 of all time.

Had KH for the first (and only) time last summer. It was delicious, but it also didn't blow me away. I'd say it was 10% better than a Sucaba I'd had a week earlier. Awfully damn good...but considering what you have to give up to get one...

I'd have loved to try each of them fresh, that's all I can say.

Blasphemy that this may be, outside of Rare, I still think Bramble is the best variant. And that thing is getting better and better each time I try it. In a year or so it's going to be great!

 

Given that those are one-offs, I think that's largely guesswork. They probably use a rule of thumb similar to most BAs: "Is it a high-gravity stout/barleywine? Yeah, sure, it'll age fine."

Still, if those beers develop into, say, infection... it's fair game to review them as-is, right? The label says so.

 

They are one offs but they are one offs produced by someone who knows a lot more about beer than I do, so i will take their word for it. I can't guess as the extent of your beer knowledge so I wont comment further on that subject.

If you have a beer that the brewery encourages the consumer to age and it becomes infected your first course of action should be to contact the brewery and see if they will make it right( either a refund or send you a replacement if that is possible).If they don't correct the situation then yes review it as if that's what the beer were meant to be

 

I'm so sick of hearing this used...no matter how applicable it is.

 

See that's where palates and each owns opinion come in to play. Terrible to age in terms of what it's supposed to be, a full bodied bright and rich coffee stout. I think it's the best coffee stout period when it's fresh IMO. But it's still an amazing beer with age. It's just not what it use to be. To each their own.

 

someone ask for Subby Dooby? ah shit. another false alarm.

 

I would rather drink an aged bourbon county coffee than countless other fresh bourbon barreled coffee stouts

 

I have no idea what you're talking about with a green pepper taste. I don't think there's anything stale about it with age. Might need a palate tune up?