Aging sours

Aging can allow more "funk" to develop in certain styles and can change the character of the beer in others.

 

I was holding onto numerous Cascade bottles(lacto heavy and if I recall all lacto) to see how they progressed. Most of them are very lacto-sour forward, even moreso after a few years, and that is at proper temp. I've found that alot of lacto induced fruit beers really lose fruit and gain sourness.

I've had a lot better luck with brett and sacc beers or combos of all including lacto. Within the past year I've opened a Batch 1 Consecration and Batch 4 Temptation and they were absolutely AMAZING!

 

Time allows the Brett phenolics to become developed. Brett also converts lactic acid to esters, so as the acidity lessens you get more fruity aspects from the esters. Mainly I like aging my sours to see how they change over time.

 

The wild yeast (Brett) and Bacteria (pedio and lacto) tend to be very slow eating, compared to commercial brewer's yeast (sac), so they will continue chewing on any residual sugars left behind. The end result is that sours generally become more sour with aging.

 

I think that Rob1110 and WILD-THING both hit on good points: any fruit will be dampened; and overall the sourness will increase slightly. I agree with jae as well, but I don't believe any actual reduction in pH occurs, just an overall "softening" of character. Overall I've found that aging sour beers takes a long time, and doesn't show quite the change that stronger, maltier beers do. Unless you've got a lot of money and a lot of time it's probably not worth it.

 

I don't cellar them to see how they change. I cellar sours because I know I can. They are easily the least worrisome style to cellar...for reasons mentioned above, they tend to "keep" longer than most, if not all, other styles.