will warm conditioning for longer improve taste?

[sqrson]

Hi, It was probably covered before, but I couldnt find an answer:
As my fridge is not big enough to keep all my homebrew (ales) for long cold conditioning, I am wondering whether keeping it in room temperature for long period of time, then dropping in the fridge for about a week ( I tend to rotate my stock in the fridge, so it hardly stays there longer than a week), still helps them with conditioning and flavour development. I hope this question makes sense.. If not, I'll try to explain it this way: if the ale is supposed to cold condition for lets say 4-5 weeks until it tastes great, will I get the same result for keeping it in room temp for the same duration of time and only dropping it in the fridge for the last few days?
Only on my 3r brew now and soo much to learn :hmm: .. thx in advance

 

[NickW]

I've heard a few opinions on this... also interested :thumb:

 

[jonnymorris]

I reckon so. Your beer will last longer if stored at cellar temperatures but I would have thought a few weeks maturing at room temp will have the same benefit as a few weeks at cold temps.

 

[chrig]

In my limited experience it does improve whilst in the warm, maybe not as well as if it were at cellar temp but I have been unable to test side by side

 

[sqrson]

Thx for your replies.
Just about to test it myself, got 2 bottles of Coopers IPA - bottled 29/01/14. 1st had two weeks to carbonate then in the fridge up until now, 2nd all the time in room temp until few min ago, when I moved it into a fridge. Will test them tomorrow side by side (the sacrifices you make in the name of science ;-) )and I will post the findings afterwards if anyones interested.

 

[Slid]

I'd be interested for sure. My hunch is that the maturation process could be quicker in the warm, but that the beer will keep longer in the cold. Since the keeping may be more important, especially for beer in wooden kegs, this may be the reason for beer being kept cool.

 

[sqrson]

Ok, so I've compared the 2 sample bottles and the results are veery suprising!! Before my ruling I want to assure that both beer served in same temp (12C), in same type of glass, cleaned/rinsed in the same way. I will refer to the cold conditioned bottle as no.1, and the one in room temp until yesterday as bottle no.2.
Diffrence struck straight away while pouring into glass. The no1 produced decent head that started to vanish quite quickly, no.2 however had a much bigger head that stayed a lot longer.
Aroma - no difference (it was my 1st brew so not very aromatic anyway)
FLAVOUR - here's where it gets interesting - I was expecting no1 to be much better, but its not the case at all. no1 was more harsh and bitter then no2. I like my beer quite bitter, but I have to admit that no2 was better balanced and the bitterness was more pleasurable.
I know the test was very subjective and its only my personal opinion, but I would defo go for no2 if I had to choose. The difference between the two wasn't massive, but noticable.

As the result I will not feel bad about keeping my beer conditioning in room temp anymore.
F1 starts in few seconds so I'm off :party:

 

[ericmark]

Thank you interesting cold conditioning and lager process must be similar and the whole idea of lager process is you can store the beer for longer. However as the ABV goes up you can also store the beer for longer. IPA was designed to be transported over a long distance and in sailing ships would have been clearly stored for longer than beer brewed for the home market what was done to IPA to make it able to stand the voyage I don't know? I would guess a high ABV but don't know.

I have found beer stored for a long time does taste better at the moment drinking a November brew and in my shed clearly warmer in summer than winter and I have noticed the beer stored over winter tastes better than beer stored over the summer but as to if this was length of time in bottle or temperature I don't know as last summer I was short of stock so beer was not conditioned for as long.

As I compare the kits used I find Yorkshire Bitter is more bitter than Scottish Heavy and although I am sure if I brewed Yorkshire Bitter slower I could get it more to my taste why bother when Scottish Heavy is what I want and does not required slow brewing process?

To me keeping beer 4 months means I have loads of stock and a full shed since only to date had one off bottle which was poured down the sink, then why use a process designed to store beer for longer when as a result it also takes longer to make? I have never the less tried a lager one with 20 deg C and one with 10 deg C to compare taste but at the present rate it will be May before I test and by that time it will be too late to try another slow brew at low temperature until November as no fridge used.

I am sure the two brews will taste different but 15 days start to bottling and 72 days start to bottling the one using lager yeast will have to be really a fantastic brew to be worth repeating. I say 72 days as yet still in demijohns waiting for the gravity to drop to 1.006 and still well off that point. Since garage is warming up it will not be that long before ready to bottle planning for 14th April.

As to head yes I see a problem with cold brews holding more gas than warm brews clearly likely that a cold brew will produce more of a head. But so many things can alter the head including using vibrators under the glass and I am not really interested in the head.

I am sure for each yeast there must be temperature where conditioning stops (too cold) and where conditioning does not convert the right parts (too hot) and to test requires a lot of time and I realise I did the two lager kits in the wrong order as the one lagered will have been conditioning for less than time than the one brewed at 20 degs C which ever way round you do them it's not a true comparison as we have live beers and no two brews are same anyway. I would have needed to have stopped conditioning by reducing the temperature to 4 degs in fridge even then not sure it would work.

But two days not enough looking at two months and how long does anyone what to wait?

 

[BenM41]

i'd think (as a chemist) that warm temps will enhance the aromas/tastes, because the molecules have more thermal energy... but obviously the warm/wet/sweet conditions help microbes grow quicker, so tainting your brew quicker.

the best barrel of beer ive ever made was brewed in late spring and conditioned/drunk over the summer months (where even the 'cool' days of last summer were well above 15 degrees). so i think there is something in this idea. lets be honest, the main reason we want cold beer is because that's what we've become accustomed to in pubs. a good real ale shouldn't be served chilled anyway.

just my two penneth worth.