Whales falling off?

Og rare and CBS were the only two whales I've had that I felt fell off a cliff. Rare is still good, but not any better that regular bcbs. I've has CBS where the maple was gone to a bottle that tasted like red and green peppers.

....and side project the origin, but that only took a couple months to go to chit.

 

You'll get plenty of different opinions on these, or any, aged beers. That will be part opinion, part storage conditions, & partly the variables you have every time you open up a beer.

Specific to your list (& illuminating my point), I had both the original bottlings or Rare & Assassin at Darkness Day in October 2015. Rare was freaking amazing, & far better than a bottle I'd tasted several months earlier (different storage conditions?). The Assassin, on the other hand, I wouldn't have believed was Assassin if I hadn't seen the bottle; I thought it was OK at best, a huge fall-off from a beer that was transcendent fresh.

Trading for aged beers is a crap shoot!

 

All true. One thing you can do is to ask the pedigree of an aged beer before pulling the trigger. How was the beer stored? Are you the original owner of the bottle? If not, where/who did you get it from? And so on. Invasive, perhaps, but if you're trading big for something, I believe you have the right to at least have some basic questions answered that might shed light on how the bottle might be holding up.

 

I've been fortunate enough from living in Tampa and then Iowa to stock up on a couple whales, most notably 3 DBHs, 5 Assassins (2014), and 3 KBBSs (2013).With the DBH I drank one fresh, one at about 6 months, and one at a year. I thought the difference between them wasn't very stark. I enjoyed all of them immensely. I also have a friend who had it fresh and then again about 3 months ago and said it was still great (though I too have heard a few complaints). I'm holding on to my last one until my wedding day, more for its symbolic value than an expectation that it will hold up well or improve.

I thought KBBS held up incredibly well. We had our final one last year and it was as decadent as ever. In fact, it was better than I remembered it being (though it had been 2 years since I last had it so who knows if that was actually the case).

The Assassin was much different for me. The one I had fresh (and later on draft) was fantastic. It was super sweet, boozy, and rich. I know some people thought it was messy and brash, but I really enjoyed it. I traded two away and held the last two to crack for when my fiance and I each completed our PhDs. I finally did that this past year and had the Assassin (so, around 26 months?) and I thought it dropped off pretty significantly. It lost its aggressive flavor and had faded to something more mundane. It was still very good, but to me, it lost its defining qualities.

 

Just because it may be considered a whale doesn't mean it will age better than any other beer. I've learned the hard way with some things from my cellar, while the bottles may look great in the cellar, they don't always hold up when poured into the glass.

 

This is a great idea for a thread. Anyone open up a Casey Leaner lately?