What To Do With Your Old (Imperial) Pils
If you’re a beer geek it seems as if you have to have a cellar nowadays. I don’t mean a literal cellar, but something that serves the purpose of aging beer. Whether it’s a wine fridge covert for vertical storage, a standard fridge turned all the way down or just a cool corner in a basement or closet, most committed beer geeks have their place to hide their beer. But do you know what to put in those spaces? Today, I’m going to look at a specific style, one that I’ve heard some debate about as to whether its suitable to aged. Let’s look at the style of the Imperial Pilsner and see what we can find out.
For the purpose of this experiment today I used a fresh bottle of Grand Teton’s Persophone Imperial Pilsner and a bottle of Boulevard and Orval’s Collaboration No.1 Imperial Pilsner that was brewed last January. While there are many other Imperial Pilsners on the market, I chose these two for specific reasons. First, the Persephone Pils is the freshest Imperial Pilsner on the market, having been brewed just this January. For an argument about the merits of aging a beer, one with as little age as possible would be ideal. I chose the Boulevard No.1 as my aged example because I had tried it a few times last year when fresh and again when slightly less fresh, but still relatively new. With the memory of that beer still readily available in my mind, I wanted to give it another try after spending over a year in Boulevard’s cellar.
Note: For the purpose of this article I am not trying to provide a review of the beer. My goal is to pick out the components of the beer and identify the strengths and weaknesses of the fresh and aged examples. For reviews of these beers, please visit their pages on RateBeer via the links provided earlier in the article.
I started with the Persephone Pils to get the idea of the fresh Imperial Pilsner etched into my mind and my palate. The first note is the alcohol. The style is an imperialization of a classic session beer and the difficulty for brewers is to capture the essence of the pilsner while intensifying it. The alcohol tends to be the hardest feature to hide with this amplification. At the same time, the hops are bright and vibrant, jumping off your palate as a crisp finish to a still relatively light bodied style of beer.
When I compare this to the fresh bottles of Boulevard No. 1 I had tried last year, the bright hops, and light body are definitely something these beers had in common. In the No.1, the alcohol was better hidden but I wouldn’t say this had anything to do with the age of the beer. In both cases it was the fresh qualities of the beer that stood out as impressive and appealing.
Moving on to the aged version of the Boulevard No.1 the first thing I notice is the batch labeling. On the side of the bottle it says to drink this beer before September of 2010. While some will ignore these dates for beer cellaring, or some breweries will even mock the use of best before dates, it was also highlighted in the bottle tag for Persephone that it would be best to not age this style.
Upon opening the beer and pouring it into the glass, I’m actually surprised by the level of hoppiness still present in the beer. The aroma still contains a trace of that spicy noble hopping that makes the pilsner style so enjoyable. Even within the flavor, there’s a good amount of hops still present. Unfortunately, when compared to the fresh bottles enjoyed previously, the beer lacks the highlights that made it so enjoyable. Still a very good beer, it just doesn’t elevate to the excellent level any more. The aging shows slightly in the malt, continuing to soften the effect on the palate.
While this was a small sample size, it is worth noting the results. Fresh, the style of Imperial Pilsner is loaded with everything that makes the pilsner style so popular: light, subtly sweet malt, spicy hops and a refreshing finish. With age, the beer feels more like a light shielded by a thin curtain. The experience is softer, a little muddled, and lacking the statements of flavor made in the fresh versions. The alcohol sting that came through in the fresh bottles does fade with time, but is this benefit worth the cost of the rest of the beer?
In the future, I doubt I will be aging any Imperial Pilsners, not intentionally at least. It may be worthwhile to hold a bottle for 3 or even 4 months in a refrigerator to see if there is a point at which the hops stay bright and the alcohol fades back slightly. In my opinion, wherever this perfect balance may lie, it would be best to open the beer a little earlier as opposed to a little later than that point.
