Conditioning vs fresheness

[Ibasterd]

I had a question randomly occur to me about conditioning time vs freshness. Several if not most commercial breweries have a "best consumed by" or a freshness date on their beers. While in homebrewing, a lot of importance is placed on conditioning time. Conditioning time in homebrewing seems to be much longer (months to years) vs commercial times that seem to be weeks. At what point does a beer stop improving with time and simply get old. I realize there are a lot of variables that go into conditioning time of homebrews, but it seems like there is a paradox in this somewhere.

[DaYooper]

A lot of this (all?) depends on the type of beer. An IPA will start losing its aromas and flavors over time, so for many of my IPAs I consider them ready as soon as I put them on gas and they have carbonated. I have some stouts that I have aged over time for several years, letting the complex and malty flavours blend together. A high alcohol barley wine may take several years to get the fuesels and other off tastes to age out. I really enjoy finding the "drinking windows" of beers I like by setting a case or two on the shelf and drinking them over time. Ive had a batch of Thomas Hardys that I aged for up to twenty years in verious steps from day one to end. Boy, did it kill me to drink that last 20 year old bottle. But BOY was it good!!!

[Beer-lord]

I agree with Yooper and I've sometimes found that with my IPA's....even the very hoppy ones, that there is a period when they start loosing their zip but then, much later, may mellow out and while not the same beer as intended, they morph into different tasting brew.
I can't always finish my kegs while fresh and may not like what I'm tasting as much but its usually still very good. I've found in some cases, that my dark beers and stouts actually age better in bottles than kegs.

[braukasper]

have to agree with yooper. I brew a holiday ale which we will not even open till it has aged fro three years. I brew mostly higher ABV Belgiums so at least 6 months there. My pils also take awhile.

[BigPapaG]

I agree that darker beers age better when bottle conditiomed, and in many cases, the longer the aging the better the beer. Stouts, porters, scotch ales, holiday ales etc. tend to benefit from aging as the malts tend to develop complex flavor profiles... To a point... Then they don't get much better and often decline...

Hops do fade over time and generally lighter malts age poorly, tend to darken and lose some flavor.

My Scotch Ale has a good amount of various malts but also a lot of hops. I use bittering, flavor and aroma and at one month, the beer is so bitter that it's undrinkable. But, by the third to fifth month, the aroma and flavor hops have melded into the malt profile, the bittering has lessened and the malt begins to come through with a developed sweetness. By one year, it's good, by the second year, great... At year three they begin to get so so...

This will be different for each kind of beer.

I like my APA's, IPA's, Cream Ales, Kolsch's, American Blonds and Lights all rather young... Same with most wheats... Ans some Belgians!

I like to lager my Pilsners for a month or two to develop more of the Pils Sweetness. Same with some of my Belgians...

It really is a guessing game outside of the above as each beer is a living entity and each will be different from the other, and in many cases slightly different from another batch of the same beer.

Experiment! YMMV!

[Kealia]

Also worth noting is that pros don't have to age out flaws in their beers like most homebrewers do. Some of those off/green flavors we sometimes get just don't happen for the big boys so they don't have to have extended conditioning times.
If we were able to control yeast age, pitch rate, temperature, etc. the way they can we could likely drink our beers sooner, too.

[berryman]

Also worth noting is that pros don't have to age out flaws in their beers like most homebrewers do. Some of those off/green flavors we sometimes get just don't happen for the big boys so they don't have to have extended conditioning times.
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Good post Kealia, but everybody else is right on also with their answers. I too like extended conditioning times on Stouts and Porters, they really smooth out. I did the old MB Diffib. Doppelbock a long time ago and it was terrible at first, but after close to a year it was very good. Most of my beers I start drinking shortly after bottle carb, but I also do secondary time on most everything.

[Kealia]

I have to say that over the years I've been able to enjoy my beers sooner and sooner as my practices got better. I'm not saying that anything is wrong with yours Ibasterd (or anybody's for that matter), but I think it's fair to say that as we all do this more we should be getting better at it. That, and we start learning about more aspects of brewing like water, or yeast management, or temp control that allows us to make our beer just a bit better each time. Over the course of 2 years or so you gain a lot of ground and you'll likely find that you can drink your beers sooner at some point - styles aside.

And yes, the traditional thinking is that lighter weight and lighter colored ales are ready and fresh sooner.

Cheers.