Vintage Beer?!

[sadistick]

Anyways, long story short...was at the good ol LCBO yesterday, looking at their various imported beers, and saw this really fancy looking smallish box, that said Fuller's (or feller's...cant recall, no receipt handy) 2006 "Vintage Beer"...well, with a $7 price tag each, it better be vintage!

Just was wondering if any of you folks have tried this...I bought a couple, giving one to my dad as he is a beer nut...they say you should actually age these 3-4 years...wondering if anyone has had any experience with it.

Cheers.

[Brad Ballinger]

I'm skeptical about aging beer for that long. But a vintage date on a beer bottle occurs from time to time. Sierra Nevada's Celebration Ale, for example, will put the year on the bottle. For products such as that one that have limited seasonal releases, the producer will sometimes put the year on the latest release. I can think of two reasons for this -- 1) assure the conumer is getting fresh product and that the retailer isn't just pulling some old product out of storage; and 2) invite comparisons of the product from year to year (for the true geeks like me).

[Okbrewer]

Fuller's Vintage Ale is a wonderful English-style barleywine. It is one of my favorites; in fact, I have several of the 'stylish red boxes' hibernating in my closet. The vintage you saw, 2006, will be good, but it is better with some real age on it. The ones I have are from 2001, the oldest I think I have had was from 1997. Don't be afraid of the price tag, though $7 is a bit more than I usually pay.

But, if you don't like big, malty, high alcohol beers, don't waste your money.

Bob R in OKC

[Okbrewer]

Here are some notes regarding 3 versions of Fuller's Vintage Ale I have from a barleywine tasting we did in 2003:

#13 Fuller’s Vintage Ale – 1997 (import commercial from the UK)

Honeyed malt with some earthy hop tones in the aroma. Fruity and malty with definite dark fruit overtones. Some dryness which could be alcohol, but which I suspect is actually oxidation. Pleasant, but didn’t really meet expectations.

Official Upper-Level Inebriation Ranking: Good Beer!

#14 Fuller’s Vintage Ale – 1998 (see above, the following year’s vintage)

YOHOOOOHOOO!!! Honeyed malt and earthy EK Goldings in perfect aromatic harmony. Palate matches the aroma, one of the best balanced beers of all time. Leans just enough toward the bitter end to maximally accent the maltyness. Just enough alcohol to dry it out in the finish. AHHHH!!!!

Official Upper-Level Inebriation Ranking: Best Beer of the Day!!!

#15 Fuller’s Vintage Ale – 1999 (see above,the following year’s vintage)

Still has that great honeyed malt aspect in the nose, but the hop character isn’t really there (strange, given this is a younger vintage.) Good depth of malt character, but lacking the balance of the ’98. It comes off a bit green. Good but not stellar.

Official Upper-Level Inebriation Ranking: Very Good Beer

These beers are able to weather a loooong 'maturation' period, but like I said earlier, don't be afraid to sample one now!

Bob R in OKC (BTW we sampled 20 barleywines that day!)

Edited December 20, 2006 by Okbrewer (log)

[cdh]

As Bob demonstrates, not all beers don't age well.

The ones that do are the high alcohol heavily hopped varieties, which are few and far between.

[stevea]

Many microbreweries produce holiday beers each year, releasing them around Thanksgiving. Virtually every such beer that is released in bottles is also labeled with the year. This, at least to me, serves a couple of purposes. First, it assures me that the holiday beer I'm buying is this year's beer, not something that's been left lying around for a year. And second, for those beers that are worthy of aging, it allows me to keep track of which is which when I'd like to compare the 2005 bottling with the 2006, for example.

Two beers that do keep wonderfully are Sierra Nevada's Celebration Ale and Hair of the Dog's Doggy Claws. In my neighborhood of Portland, Or, one restaurant/bar usually has a vertical tasing of Celebration Ale each year, with as many vintages as it can find, sometimes five or six. And I've heard Alan Sprints, the head brewer of Hair of the Dog (also in Portland) say that he prefers the taste of his Doggy Claws after it's been in the bottle a year. At their dock sale this year, they had several vintages for sale.

[eje]

This might just be my opinion; but, one Holiday beer I find doesn't particularly benefit from aging is the Anchor Holiday.

We've been doing a tasting now for 5 years, and mostly, they just seem to get flat.

There are some changes in what spices might have dominance; but, they aren't usually particularly interesting.

Perhaps it's time to Switch to the Sierra Nevada Celebration or Speakeasy Old Godfather.

[muichoi]

It is good stuff, and the price you guys pay is the same as I do, about 10 minutes drive from the brewery!

[sadistick]

Sounds good, thanks for the replies folks.

Looks like I will buy a few more of these bad boys and chuck em in the wine fridge, leaving one out to sample now, obviously

[Malkavian]

I have some 8.5% scotch ale that I made in may of 05, it's aged exceptionally well, as have some bottles of IPA that I found in the cooler at work.

In contrast, MOST of the other bottles in the cooler tasted like cardboard and socks, as they weren't designed with the strength or hop rate to mature that long (probably a 2-3 year span)

An interesting exercise is to buy a bottle each year for several years, and have a tasting. Co worker of mine does that with Stone's beers when he can get someone to send him a bottle (alas, they don't distribute in NC)