I Aged Homebrew Beer For 20 Months - Here's What Happened

When the 99 beer challenge was complete there were two beers not yet ready for tasting: a Lambic and a Flanders Red. I brewed them 20 months ago and it's finally time to figure out how to package them and give them a taste test.
Lambic Brew Day: • Lambic | Extract Home ...
Flanders Red Brew Day: • Flanders Red Ale | Bre...
Packaging Sour Beers: • How Should I Package S...
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[@matthewnorth5523]

Sad to this series end, it was so informative to me as a homebrewer, but of course it had to at some point. I always like to watch the video relating to a specific style before I make start my recipe design process. Congratulations on a fantastic job. Let's hope the craft beer scene keeps inventing new styles so there can be another series like this in the future.

[@TheHomebrewChallenge]

Thanks so much!

[@ReaperUnreal]

I'm not really surprised the lambic wasn't sour, brett isn't a souring bacteria and normally it would be done with a blend of pediococcus and lactobacillus (plus whatever other wild bacteria and yeast). Yeast labs do sell blends targetted to this though.

[@Scootenfruity]

Just wanted to add that Brett isn’t bacteria but yeast

[@Squildotcom]

Yes to this. Also, lambic typically includes a large portion of unmalted starchy grain for long chain sugars. These slowly feed the bacterial/yeast community, building complexity with time. Using extract (like this batch) is not going to give you as much starches and dextrines. I wonder too whether your hops have inhibited the bacteria. The Belgians age their hops for years until the alpha is so low it doesn't inhibit Lacto and other bacteria.

[@garethvenables9607]

Congratulations on finally finishing the 99 beers. We need more content though. How about re-brewing all your favourite beers from the 99 or trying to improve on the ones you weren't so keen on (the smoked beer springs to mind!)

[@PartyTimeBrewing]

Great idea you or the comments came up with on using the flex for the pasteurizing. Another great use for the modular Clawhammer system. Cheers!

[@briandowdell358]

Congratulations, Martin! You did it. You're an inspiration!

[@turk3007]

That packaging was by far the most dodgiest/homebrew thing you've done and as a professional brewer I have to say I LOVE THAT🍻. People can take homebrewing to seriously which can make it lose it's charm. Great to see Lauren again and congrats on a great series. Look forward to future videos on both channels and Matt Le Tissier is a god⚽️🍻

[@TheHomebrewChallenge]

😆 He gets the ball and he takes the piss…

[@Marceloluizz]

You make history in KZbin homebrew community. Thanks so much and hope you keep going forward this project. Cheers from Brazil 👏🍺🥂☕!!

[@seriomarkj]

well congrats again on finishing it up...fun to come back to a tasting like this cheers

[@JesterStuttle]

I just finished watching the challenge last month. I didn't have to wait as long for this.

[@eiskalt4136]

Brilliant! Congrats on officially finishing the 99 brew challenge!! I’ve watched you from pre pandemic when I was in the Durham area. Really got me interested in the home brewing scene 😊

[@TheHomebrewChallenge]

🙌

[@HOMEBREW4LIFE]

Great video per usual, cheers Chief!

[@alanmulryan]

Have to say man, very well done. An amazing journey and one I'm glad you shared. I have a few brewhouse staples I like to have on tap and I've ventured away from those in the past with disastrous results. 100% down to skill and setup and maybe down the line I'll get there and experiment with success and following you through this has been so informative for a novice homebrewer. The challenge may have ended but the channel (namely you) has so much more to offer, keep inspiring.

[@TheHomebrewChallenge]

Really appreciate this!

[@graykilpatrick1319]

Monk's is my favorite Flemish Sour Red Ale!

[@MadMax00215]

8:10 - That was a blanket? Fooled the hell out of me. And it looked pretty darn good as well. I have to admit the new grey background looks great. No focus at all is taken away from your content. Good job. 👍

[@rustypotbrewer4743]

Ive been waiting for this video for months.

[@albrough]

Nice video! I’m keen to get something like this going

[@kevywevy84]

Yay, Lauren is back!

[@LaurenCutthroat]

Yay me! Haha :)

[@OliverHoerold]

Thanks a lot for the video. Now I have to decide how I want to do with my Flanders Brown Ale that sits in the cellar for over a year.

[@davidsnyder2818]

I brewed my Flanders red after watching your original video. I went with the Roeselare blend as well and I just packaged mine today after 495 days of aging! I'm excited to see that my pellicle essentially looked identical to yous. I kegged half of the batch to have it fresh for the holidays and then bottled the other half to age for more time. I re-yeasted mine with Red Star Pasteur Champagne yeast just in case but I did end up using Grolsch-top bottles so I'll keep my fingers crossed they don't pop.

[@jamesh1004]

Congratulations on completing your 99 beer challenge, during this time I moved from extra to all grain and found all your content extremely useful! So I guess my question is what's the next challenge? Maybe you should hold a comp with best suggestion winning?

[@TheHomebrewChallenge]

Thanks! Have plans for something exciting coming next.

[@sergeant-foxtrot4458]

Finally a new video!

[@coryserratore5951]

Longest I waited for a beer was 6 months for a Belgian quad - and that was the last bottle, not the first, of the batch. Yes, it's worth the wait.

[@dihydrogenmonoxide]

very timely video, I've got a double irish red I soured with a flanders red yeast, it's been sitting for a good year now! Also a bit worried about cross contamination...

[@TheBruSho]

Ingenious way to use some tools around the brewery to pasteurize, will have to remember that trick!

[@TheHomebrewChallenge]

I’m fermenting something else in that now so about to find out if it worked 😀

[@davidf760]

The thing about lambic is that they are barrel aged which gives it some complexity which is hard to replicate at a homebrewer scale.

[@bonsang1073]

Farmyard flavor/ smell real appellation is BRETT. Coming from the french word bretteur : leathery, musky swordmen the slept in a barn.

[@RobertMayfair]

Her mixed accent cracks me up

[@LaurenCutthroat]

😐😅

[@laurenceprantner8618]

Those flip top bottles, both the small and large can be CAPPED as well, dodging the flip top carbonation challenge. Thanks for the 99 weeks of fun stuff! Love the new Brulosophy Show!

[@carlosgmeyerq]

What's that book? You should definitely publish your own book with recipes you used during the challenge and recommendations, I would definitely buy it. I have some time brewing and I have used your videos as reference quite a lot.

[@coryserratore5951]

I'm glad the Flanders Red turned out well. I just had a bottle of Duchess yesterday and it reminded me of this challenge and I realized I never followed up on the tasting. balsamic is the quality that stood out for me with the Duchess. I'm curious if that carried forward with your batch, Martin. (and what about the woodchips?)

[@weisspayne]

I have a "solera" going with carboy, a red, and soaked oak blocks. I am going to draw my first 1 gal from it this weekend and carbonate it in my growler. Then add in a gal on another beer that I brew this weekend. It should be interesting. I like how no two beers will be the same. It would be good to have a series on your own solera (even get one made of wood) and see how it progresses.

[@ThanksAgain]

"Aging" beer. Not what Ray Daniels would call it. But to tell you the truth I have home beer and growlers and bottled and corked for three or four years and it pops like champagne, without any degradation of flavorz. Good for you old boy.

[@kevinbanecker7757]

Congrats on doing all 99 beers dude

[@KalosPVP]

came to say what others have said, Brett will not sour your beer.

[@vlagavulvin3847]

I got used to do just the same ole thangs. Cheers from the other Hemisphere ;)

[@digitaldominatrix]

I've always thought labmics were highly carbonated beers. At least more carbonated than an ale. Maybe this contributed to the disappointment?

[@jimbo4375]

Yeah. Belgium beers in general are very highly carbonated

[@Vykk_Draygo]

Flanders Red is one of my favorite styles. I agree with not chugging it, but I will drink an entire 750 ml bottle by myself. I might go get a bottle of Duchesse du Bourgogne tonight. 🤣 The lambic sounds like it was just too old. If it was just Brett and Saccharomyces, then it doesn't really need a year or more of aging. But... it happens. 🤷‍♂

[@Jango1989]

As a sour and Lambic geek, I think I was overly hyped for this but congratulations on finally finishing the challenge. Maybe you can try properly creating a Lambic style beer one day. I think you should have tried harvesting your own yeast for the Lambic as wild yeast is such a huge part of it. I really don't think a packet of yeast will ever do it justice and harvesting wild yeast is such a fun experiment in and of itself. But like I said, sour geek etc so that's just my incredibly biased view point. I'm still glad to see you reach the amazing end of the 99 beers :)

[@TheHomebrewChallenge]

Yeah harvesting some wild yeast for this would have been fun. Will have to try that.

[@jcinsaniac]

Brewin' in da Crypt...love it. Would have been nice to get the pH on these, do you recall? At least the Flanders, since you pasteurized it, won't be giving you the Kilty Challenge - chug a few and run for the loo. Love it...great stuff. Cheers.

[@TheHomebrewChallenge]

The Kilty Challenge 😂

[@ElementaryBrewingCo]

Such patience!! I want to age a beer but I’m not sure I’d be able to wait that long 🤣

[@ffwast]

The carboy just sitting in a closet somewhere is key.

[@JoshuaBost]

at approx. 7:15 What you're doing here could actually be quite dangerous if not done properly! Novices beware: Watch that very carefully, and keep any ingition sources WELL away from that. In this instance it's probably not a big deal, but done incorrectly, or not monitored it creates a problem source. In short: These are the same first steps you'd take to distill this, instead of a column you've got a lid though. This brew is being brought it up to a temp where things will start to vaporize*, which is what that build up of pressure is -- You've now got a vessel full of pressurised, flammable gas (plus the CO2, which I suppose levels it out a bit). If this was left too long the gas mix will start venting through the PRV, which is then going to mean you could have flamable vapor in your workspace, but it will soon quickly condense back to liquid again... usually a flamable liquid. *Edited to remove ethanol directly there, as it's 78C not 72C like I was confused with... But that doesn't really matter -- for example when going to 72C you'll bepast the boiling point of methanol, at 64C; then approaching ethanol at 78C. There's a host of other chemicals to worrya bout with bnoiling points between those, but we can keep it simple and just care about those two for now. There are some things complicating this, but they may mislead: Firstly, I'm aware the solution is a lot of water which drives up those boiling points, the other is that the setpoint is "only" 72C so you may be asking "how does ethanol vaporize?!?" -- 72C is misleading, that is only the temp where it's sampled -- any liquid close to the heating element can get much hotter, allowing it to vaporize, especially when the liquid level is only just above the heating element.

[@DannozDirect]

Spat my coffee out over "a pair of teeth"!

[@TismFishing]

Just use an iodophor sanitizer, I learned the hard way Star San is not sufficient while using wild yeast strains. Now I use an iodophor as a regular part of my routine every two or three batches.

[@NWsmallbatchBrewing]

Nice video ! What's the secret book of beer styles you are using? =P

[@TheHomebrewChallenge]

BJCP Style Guidelines.

[@IMakeBeer]

Martin. My new Clawhammer Brewery arrived today. Any tips to avoid/incorporate with this system?

[@caminojohn3240]

With the pasteurization, did you have an agitator or slow moving paddle to move it around the tank? Without proper stirring, your going to have pockets of scorched beer and perhaps unpasteurized. I've cooked ice cream base on the stove and with constant stirring, it took forever.

[@AllianceOfCalgon]

I have never worries about putting sours in kegs. If you want some hard-core bugs buy some unpasteurised gueuze and add the dregs. They are pretty hop tolerant.

[@dimash244]

Mine never developed pellicle like yours did :-( was too cold in my basement, so about 2 months ago I moved into my curing chamber (meat curing) set it to 25°C see activity in there again... Will keep it in there for a few more months My Flanders red is more active than Brett.

[@alanpotter8680]

I'll comment before I watch the video... We age our beers exclusively, every time, all the time. We have beers in the basement brewed when I was a high-schooler (7-8 years ago)... Yes, big beers, lots of hops, lots of alcohol. Recently I opened one of my own brews (we are a family of brewers) and it was a Belgian Saison-style, ABV 7.2%, IBU ~ 24 .. After 9 months in 3 C, the result was beer that you couldn't even TELL it had such a high alcohol content, the head retention was mad.... It was still there after the beer was in my belly. You could cut it with a knife. I can't stress enough to all home-brewers out there how important it is to be patient with your beer.

[@marcelomendes2302]

👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼🍻

[@jafarym77]

I'll love to brew these kind of beers, but the risk of contamination in my brewery is just not worth it.

[@qwerty6383]

6:30 so much beer left on the bottom

[@JesterStuttle]

I've used carb drops before. Full spectrum of carbonation from flat to 2" of foam.

[@TheHomebrewChallenge]

True dat.

[@Bushwookie_18]

Cheeky hint with the shirt

[@iliffavenuebrewhouse6496]

never had good success with those carbonation tabs. Table sugar is the way to go.

[@miwinterdays6707]

Have you brewed anything after this video? Did you have any issues with bugs after you pasteurized your equipment? I was always interested in the styles but to scared of contaminating everything.

[@TheHomebrewChallenge]

I have another beer in that fermenter right now. Time will tell!

[@Vykk_Draygo]

I've got a brew in a PET fermentor that I previously used Roeselare blend in. It is not infected. I washed it rigorously with hot PBW, and Star San'd the heck out of it. It was also sitting dry for several months before that. I think if it isn't scratched on the inside then you have a reasonable chance of it being fine. But don't do it if you only have one fermentor.

[@JasonSmith-nt6rl]

What brew book are you referencing?

[@ReaperUnreal]

Looks like a BJCP reference guide.

[@JasonSmith-nt6rl]

@@ReaperUnreal Thank you

[@JesusMartinez-jj4nz]

🎉🎉🎉My son will be born some time around December. I want to brew a barley wine. Would it be possible to age it in my fridge for 21 years?

[@jafarym77]

You need at least 6 months for all that high alcohol to mellow down. But you can brew one now and age it for his 1st birthday next year. I'm drinking one right now that I brewed in January 2021.

[@TheHomebrewChallenge]

What a wonderful idea.

[@PabloAM93]

How do you exactly prevent oxygen exposure to the beer whilst ageing a beer in a fermenter? Also, not sure if it's useful at this point since the video has been published, but on a Facebook group I'm part of I saw someone with the same Spike conical you used on this video, and he covered every side port with TC blanking plates, and used a floating dip tube to pressure transfer the beer to a keg from one of the ports in the lid.

[@howamidriving27]

With a sour, the bugs will create a pellicle because they don't like oxygen. Ideally, you still want to fill to the neck of your carboy to limit oxygen though.

[@hmmy92]

first

[@daniellindsten]

I think the commercial yeast blend you used are the problem with the lambic. It’s much better to use a small amount of regular yeast like us05 and dregs from a couple of real gueze.