Does autolysis occur in aging beer?

yes

 

no

 

Maybe.

 

Absolutely yeanot.

 

Was the beer bottle conditioned?

 

I've never heard of it/experienced it happening in bottle.

anybody got any first hand experience?

 

of course it does with time/ storage conditions. That is part of the beer aging process. But autolysis isn't always a bad thing. It may be bad for a bottle conditioned pilsner, and if it occurs in the short time you have a pilsner, its due to improper storage conditions

But for a 10 year old barleywine or belgian strong its going to be part of the aging process, that adds complexity.

 

Autolysis is not the same as oxidation, which is very subjective in its own right, though not noxious like auto can be.

That reminds me that I have some beers that haven't been looked in on in a bit.

Cheers.

 

Autolysis and oxidation are different. If you take the same beer and bottle condition some of it, over time, stored next to eachother, over time they will be different. The one with yeast will change more rapidly (change for better or worse is personal preference, as with all ageing beer)

If you take a commercial bottle conditioned beer that is one month old you can recover the yeast (yeast will grow) if you take a bottle that is 10 years+ old, very few yeast will grow (in comparison). yeast die and autolysis occurs.

The noxious autolysis your talking about is gross autolysis, where all the yeast die in primary.

If I am wrong please correct me.

 

Just my opinion but like dgthrasher said, of course autollysis will occur in the bottle since there are live yeast in a bottle conditioned beer. However, I don't think the yeast propagate to such an extent in the bottle that their deaths will be greatly noticed. RIP little fellas.

 

Yeast autolysis most certainly occurs as bottle conditioned beers age. In large amounts autolysis leads to off flavors, in small amounts though it's perceived as added complexity.