Two year old homebrew

Over two years ago I brewed a pale mild to a 1950s recipe. I didn’t like it much at the time, as it was very honeyish and a bit sickly. Visiting my mum last week I came across a left over bottle of the stuff.

Opened it up, fearing it would gush, but it didn’t. Whew, I calculated my priming sugar all right then. It was a bit spritzy, but not over-carbonated. It had the strong Ribena aroma of heavily oxidised homebrew, which I was expecting. It also had a very nice head, and is bright orange, which I wasn’t expecting.

Tasting it, it’s bone dry and rather reminiscent of Orval. Not as good as Orval, obviously, but in the same kind of style.  At the time my house yeast was Worthington White Shield yeast, which dries every beer out, so that shouldn’t be too surprising.

I still poured most of it away, but it was interesting to see the effect of time on a beer.