I have a quick question I need to clear up... When bottle conditioning is it important to put the beer into fridge or cooler after a couple weeks to stop the process or can I just store it at room temp for as long as want? What is the average life span of a bottle-conditioned ale... you know before it goes off or whatever. Thanks for answering
If by 'the process' you mean carbonation, you don't want to stop that. So don't refrigerate until sometime after that has finished. After carbonation is done, you're into aging. Some good things happen while aging, like the reduction of acetaldehyde (if there was any left over from fermentation). And some bigger beers can benefit from long periods of warm aging. The flavors can meld and mellow. Visit the Cellaring forum for many opinions on that. Some bad things also happen while aging, like staling due to oxidation of compounds in the beer. This can cause a variety of problems, like papery, or sherry-like flavors, and diminished hop aroma/flavor. There are too many variables to answer this question. But I would say that once your beer tastes the way you want it to taste, the way to preserve that is to refrigerate as cold as possible (without freezing).
Dark and big beers tend to have a longer shelf life than light/small beers, there are a lot of factors involved in this question such as total oxygen dissolved(oxidation problems) and the amount of bacteria present in beer(infection problems) among many others. After carbonation is done(20-40 days at room temp) let beer rest in a dark place at a room temp <76 F.You can taste your beers once in a while to know whether they are getting better or worse.
