CELLARING BARREL-AGED WILD BEER

We can never predict exactly what will come of our mixed culture wild beers as they age over time, but we can predict with great certainty that they will change. Fruit flavours and aromas evolve, dissipate, and transform. The rustic or funky character of the beer will often increase with age, the bitterness can become lower, and the carbonation may increase slightly, and all of this depends on how you store the beer.

If you want to cellar our mixed culture wild beers, ideally they should be kept in a cool, dark cellar at 12°C. A basement around 16-17°C would also work, but that might be a bit too warm for really extended (years) ageing.

Our barrel-aged beers are non pasteurized, so all of the mixed culture microbes are alive and will continue to change the beer over time. Regarding how long they can be aged, we found that our beers tend to peak around the 1-year cellar mark, but after that, we don't have much experience because we've only been making these beers for 2 years! With other commercial mixed culture beers, our personal experience is that after about 1-2 years cellared the quality starts to degrade (the mixed microbes die off, and oxygen gets in and starts to affect the beer in negative ways). The higher the alcohol, the longer the potential for ageing, so for example, a beer like Astronomie Domine (11% ABV) will likely have longer cellar life compared to Resonant Frequencies (8% ABV). Mixed culture beer with fruit is like my relationship status on Facebook, it's complicated. Sometimes they become more fruity as they age, but only to a certain point (½ year to 1 year maximum) and then the fruit flavour could start to drop off quickly, so don't forget about those ones in your cellar for too long!

That said, we do wait patiently and age the beers ourselves (in barrels and in the bottle) before we release them to the public so that they are tasting great right out of the gate. So the ageing is not necessary to fully enjoy the beers, but it is fun to see how they develop over time! Each one will be different.

The beer may taste different month to month, season to season, year to year, and that’s part of the journey. We’re stoked to have you along for the ride.