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- Jan 30, 2017
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- #21
You can age anywhere from a few months to several years, especially depending on the beer. At a certain point it can get all oxidized-tasting, but that's usually a decade or plus down the road. You'll find people opening and drinking ten-year-old Bourbon County Brand Stouts or DFH 120s semi-regularly, and vintage Belgian sours (Cantillon, Drie Fonteinen, etc.) can sell for ridiculous amounts of money.
The beer tends to be aged in its bottles/cans. I recommend BeerAdvocate as a great resource for more info than I know - https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/101/store/
One big thing to remember is never age IPAs - as they get older, the hop profile practically disappears and it just becomes a big malt bomb, usually pretty nasty because they're not brewed with aging in mind.
If you want to run a fun initial experiment, grab yourself something easily available, like a St. Bernardus 12 quadrupel ale and let it age in a dark closet in your basement for a year, then grab another off the shelf and compare the two. I have no idea the chemical processes that make aging work, but I know they're awesome.
Here's another source all about aging beer:
http://www.winning-homebrew.com/cellar-aging-beer.html
Much thanks to you and FaulkSF since I learned something new.