Fresh baked bread, goat cheese, pesto, smoked fontinella. 18 year old barley wine that sucked when it came out but is awesome right now.
Cost per person: like I know. This is just for me. It rotates my emergency goat cheese, I smoked the cheese myself, I baked the bread, how do you price a bottle of beer you bought so long ago it can drive?
Can you order this anywhere? Probably. There is some place that offers something this simple and prepped for $45. They probably even have bruschetta. Which I thought about making but decided against. They definitely have avocado toast.
They, we?, most definitely are aging barley wine. Anything that isn’t high in hops and is over 9% is a candidate for ageing. Barely wine, as the “wine” implies, is at the top of the list for aging.
When I drank this just after it came out it was almost undrinkable. Way too tannic, hop spice was disproportionate, it had too many long chain alcohols making it taste like lighter fluid. But if there are a few yeast in there then given time they will mellow out every one one those issues as they metabolize anything that looks usable.
Now it’s bitter like coffee but has a fruity phenolic profile with low esthers that perfectly balance the bitterness. The spice has reduced and blended with the alcohol which has been cut down from those sharp long chains to pure ethanol. It’s now a magical drink after all these years.
So, yeah, aging beer is definitely a thing. And there are beers that don’t work and ones where it’s mandatory.
Belgian ales, especially triples and quadruples, needs a couple of years of aging as well. But I wouldn’t let it age past 5-6 years. I find that all ale, not matter how strong, just turns into portwine when aged longer than that.
I mean it is fine if you are into that, but I prefer my beer to taste like beer.
Belgiums have a lot of esters that fade and phenols that don’t when aged. Barley wine doesn’t. They can go longer