Friday, March 10, 2006

Beer Term: Bottle Conditioned

I often find myself talking about the difference between bottle condititoned beer and pasteurized beer. Here's a great Wikipedia article about what it means to bottle condition beer. This is one of the topics that comes up often when I talk about beer with friends. I like to compare bottle conditioned beer to what the macro brewerys sell as "natural" and "fresh". It just isn't that easy. In my mind bottle conditioned beer represents a "natural" and "fresh" beer. Remember that just because this Old Stock Ale has been sitting in the cellar for over a year, doesn't mean it isn't fresh. It's probably just starting to peak.

2 comments:

Stan Hieronymus said...

Not to be "correcting" Wikipedia but . . . some beers are not re-yeasted when bottle conditioned. Because they aren't filtered there is enough yeast still in suspension to carbonate the beer.

And the Stock Ale might be more likely to be reaching its prime at three years or more (IMHO).

Prosit - Stan

Adam said...

You'r right. I would imagine that most bottle conditioned beer doesn't get both yeast and sugar. We should make the change in Wikipedia.

Heheh...about the Stock Ale. Why would you say three years? I'm not disagreeing. I just don't know any better.