Anyone traded from a Love Child #2 or #3 recently? What is the going rate for these? Are they worth acquiring? LC#4 was one of my favorite beers from last year and I have 4 of them sitting at home. I assume anyone with a #3 would have had access to get #4. LC#5 and #6 are coming out in 2015 and I would love to do a 4-5 year vertical with all of them. Any input would be appreciated, or if you have one you want to trade, let me know what you are ISO.
I see a lot of the LC#3's out there still. The #2 obviously would be a little bit more difficult but i think they're still out there. I have no idea on what they would "cost" per say. I would say whatever is fair between you and the person with the LCS
The #2 I had ~4 months ago was downright awful, but I cannot speak to the cellaring conditions of the particular bottle I had.
I think you're right to look at conditions, because we opened a Love Child #1 recently, and it was still drinking great, but it had been properly cellared the whole time. These beers have no real set trade value. You just need to find the right set of eyes.
Also, Love Child #2 and #4 are some of my favorite beers (I still have a bunch which I cellar correctly and drink them all the time and they are excellent). Love Child #3 not so much.
It's worth noting that a collection of Love Child beers isn't so much a vertical as it is a tasting of similar sour beers. With each blend, it's not our intention to create the same beer, but rather to showcase the best sour beer we have on hand at the time.
Woops. I shouldn't post before fully awake. Love Child with age on it is bad, too acetic. Bruery's sours also get too acetic for my taste with age on them.
For the above reason, we're not big fans of aging sours. We feel like we've done the work of aging the beer for you and any further aging promotes increased acidity and moves the beer further from the intentions of our blenders at the time of bottling.
Slightly off topic, but I think I've seen you post about this before...can you chime in on the claim that pasteurized beers "won't age" (or won't see changes) i.e. when people compare the old cork and caged La Folie to the current pasteurized version...true? Not true? Does pasteurizing really just "stop" the aging process and future aging?
As a Boulevard employee, I'm not really qualified to speak to the intentions behind La Folie, but I can confirm that we do not pasteurize our sours. Because of this, the lactobacillus/acetobacter/brettanomyces remain active/viable in the bottle and the beer will continue to develop with aging. Pasteurization of sour beer before packaging will kill of any acid producing bacteria or wild yeast present in the beer and will prevent further acidification during aging.
Thanks, and I was just using La Folie as an example, didn't expect you to opine about that beer in particular, just the general concept of how pasteurization would or wouldn't impact aging. Thanks for the response!
I'd say it's a matter of personal preference. I really enjoyed Love Child No. 4 fresh, but I've also really enjoyed some bottles that I've held in cold storage in our 35 F degree cooler at the warehouse.
Thanks for the insight. Actually opened a LC#4 last night that has been in my fridge since I bought them. It was quite tasty. Still one of my favorite sours, but was a bit trying on the palate when split between only two people. Good thing it was one of our last beers of the night.
Cellering isn't the same as storing a beer in a refrigerator FWIW. Generally anything I've stored in a refrigerator for more than a couple month generally starts to go south IMO. If properly stored between 50-60 degrees most AWA bottles will develop nicely (in different ways depending on the blend obviously) for several years in my experience. That's not always the case. I've had a few (mostly Bruery) turn south more quickly than anticipated. But I haven't experienced that with Love Child. Love Child #2 is my favorite of the bunch by a good margin currently.
Not sure I'd agree with you on that one. Storing beers in a fridge would only slow the aging process. There's no downside keeping beers in the fridge vs 50-60 degree unless you want the beers to age faster. Both are good ways of storing beer it just depends what your end goal is. /Soapbox
