Aging - room temp or fridge?

[bwarbiany]

So, I'll be looking at aging my excess barleywine that wasn't needed for the club barrel fill. I rarely do long-term aging on any beers, as I had too many fermentation problems in the past with high-grav beers and have thus not brewed many (luckily this barleywine seemed to ferment perfectly).

Do I age at room temp or in the fridge? Does it matter?

[maltbarley]

Everything I've seen says 50-55. I use a wine fridge to keep my long term stuff.

[backhousebrew]

50 to 55 seems to be the recommended temp for long term storage.
My cellar doesn't stay cool enough during the summer, so now I am looking to buy a freezer.
Then I'll use an external thermostat controller to keep the inside at 50 to 55.

[BrewMasterBrad]

I think the answer is "it depends". I think that room temp will probably degrade the beer fairly quickly. Cellar temps (50-55) would be great, but that is difficult to do unless you have a wine fridge and plenty of room in said fridge. I just bottled the remainder of my barleywine last week and I am storing it in my garage fridge at about 38 degrees. As long as you are below 55 degrees, the beer should remain pretty stable. I think a big factor in long term storage is maintaining a stable temperature.

[BARL Brewing]

What about bringing a keg of beer up from serving temp to ferment temp. For instance: I have 1 fridge and have keged beer on tap, I want to brew another batch before the keg is empty. So I plug the fridge into a temp controller set to ale temp, will it have an adverse affect on the beer that I had been serving cold to raise it up for 2 weeks then lowering it back down again?
Brian

[lexuschris]

Good questions... I'm not sure of the best recommendations..

However, for bottle conditioning, you would want to keep them at fermenting temps for at least a month to be sure you get the carbonation you are looking for. In my case, I usually just store them at room temp even after that. I would guess that super hot or wide variations would be worse for storage than stable comfortable temps.

And certainly keeping them someplace dark would be a benefit too! Don't want any light interaction with the hops especially!

As for taking a cold keg out of the kegerator for a few weeks for a new batch, I've done that and thought it was just fine. Beer still tasted real good when I chilled it back down later!

--LexusChris

[jward]

I do that on occasion. I have not tasted adverse effects, but the beer is finished before it gets old. Is there a limit on how may times you can do that?

When the keg warms CO2 will come out of the beer. If your CO2 has a check valve the pressure increases in the keg. If you serve the warm beer you can get too much foam and throw off the CO2 on the beer. It should be all good again once you go back to serving temps.

[BrewMasterBrad]

What about bringing a keg of beer up from serving temp to ferment temp. For instance: I have 1 fridge and have keged beer on tap, I want to brew another batch before the keg is empty. So I plug the fridge into a temp controller set to ale temp, will it have an adverse affect on the beer that I had been serving cold to raise it up for 2 weeks then lowering it back down again?
Brian

I wouldn't do this over and over to the same beer, but I don't think this would be a problem. Just don't leave the keg in your garage in the middle of summer and expect the beer to remain in good condition.