The importance of maturation

When we first started making beer I was obviously extremely keen to start drinking our beers as soon as possible. Andy, on the other hand, was always the voice of restraint. He argued that every beer needs plenty of time to mature before it is consumed.

He’s absolutely right of course, and if you read my previous post about the American Amber Ale tasting you’ll see what I mean. When we first tried it (after a couple of weeks in the barrel) the flavours just had not blended. It was like drinking two different beers in one glass.

I have a suspicion that some of the “green” taste that many people associate with home-brew beers is largely down to lack of maturation too.

So what happens to the flavours during maturation? It’s a little hard to express, but once you start tasting beers through their lifecycle you start to pick up on how the flavours mellow out and blend over time. It’s a bit like eating a chilli that has not had a couple of hours of slow simmering: the flavours are all there, but are separate and distinct. Time is needed for them to blend into a new thing.

Initially the bitterness of a beer is much more pronounced. This eases off after 4-6 weeks, and so is something that needs to be compensated for in the recipe if you want a very bitter beer. Also, unfortunately, the hop flavours and (especially) aromas ease off too. This is perhaps the one downside to a long maturation – you can loose those crisp young fresh hop aromas. I certainly noticed that with the First Gold Experiment (again, see previous posting).

So how long should beer be matured for? Well I’d say 2-3 weeks as an absolute minimum. (Andy would say 4-6 weeks minimum!). For a light hoppy beer the minimum is probably OK; for a dark ale like a porter it should be more. For lagers, maturing them for a long time very cold is all part of the process – it is not a lager if this isn’t done. In fact “lager” is the German word for “store”.

As far as we are concerned, this extended maturation phase means a couple of things:

1. We need more barrels! Currently we have three. That is just about enough, but having four would allow us to leave beers alone for longer.
2. We should aim to brew some of our darker winter beers earlier and lay them down in bottles for a long maturation phase. We plan to do this soon – we have a winter porter on the list for the brew after next.