Keeping Standards

[Cheshire Cat]

When I worked in the Food and Drink industry with Coca Cola, Heinz and Nestle we kept standards of our products to compare the current batches with. When I restarted beer brewing I would keep a bottle of the beers I brewed again for comparison. However it took up too much space so I stopped doing it.
Does anyone else on here keep comparison sample to use as a standard?
PS I think I’ll restart doing it.

 

[SMP Brewery]

I only keg, so I’d have to transfer to a bottle and then store it, not sure that would represent the original brew.
Also for beers that have a lot of dry hopping I’ve found you can’t keep them too long.

 

[The Baron]

I would say I have not gone as far as that but I have saved bottles to try against others at times the only down side is that a beer tastes different from say 2 weeks old when most people drink it to say 2 months later.
I have drunk from my keg and how the beer changes in say 2/3 weeks is unbelievable sometimes it is hard to say it is the same beer

 

[samale]

That's a difficult one, taste is so subjective. The only way would be to keep very detailed tasting notes of each brew. Taste them at certain intervals and take notes, 2 weeks, 1 months, 2 months.
Is this to make your brews more repeatable

 

[Rodcx500z]

I would say keg it carb it drink it, when you get near the end of the keg it is the best pint, this is a good indicator of how good a beer is, if you do it the other way round when you get to the end it is crap

 

[Agentgonzo]

I like brewing different styles, and don't drink enough to get through a lot of beer fast. Brewing maybe 10 times a year means that by the time i get around to repeating a recipe, the sample would be over a year old and past it's best. I'm also less fussed about consistency and repeatability.

 

[Applesnmore]

In my previous life in the fresh food industry, whilst we took reference samples it wasn't possible to keep product beyond 10 days. Seasoning blends were kept for 12 months. Intriguing about keeping beer. I do not keep samples, but am not against it As beer is a living product, and changes, how do you reference it? (a question)