Any advice on what amount of aging is/is not appropriate for stronger sours? I've been keeping Consecration for about two years (the last 750 ML bottling, whenever that was, probably late 2010). Thanks for your thoughts.
That's one beer that keeps getting better and better. So damn underrated around here (Bay Area) with everyone trying to get sours from everywhere else.
My personal experience with Consecration is that age doesn't necessarily make it better or worse, just different. I love that beer fresh, so maybe I'm not the best person to ask, but aging it just mellows the flavors a bit. The older bottles I've opened weren't as acidic or tannic as fresh bottles.
I'm definitely a fresh consecration fan. Fresh, it's one of my favorite beers. With age, it's not my thing.
Last year, we had a batch 1 750 (it was three years old at that point). Very different from fresh. Really intensely sour, crazy dry, thin body, and the carbonation had faded considerably. Still great, but not necessarily better than fresh. It would be your taste buds deciding which you prefer.
Very well put. This matches my batch 1 experience from spring of 2012...although I wouldn't have called the mouthfeel thin, even though it was *thinner* than it is when fresh.
They changed the recipe for batch 4, so the fresh Consecration really is a slightly different beer. Earlier batches were more sour. It's still great, but I prefer B1-B3. We did a B1-B7 vertical this summer and did not have any carbonation issues with earlier batches, either. That sounds like and aberration.
Not only were earlier batches more sour, the longer you sit on them the typically more sour/drier they get. I feel that fresh Consecration has a full, rich flavor, but a lot of sweetness that I like to see fade a bit.
