How Beer Ages with Colin Kaminski – BeerSmith Podcast #352

Professional brewer and author Colin Kaminski joins me this week to discuss the major aging mechanisms in beer and how you can extend the shelf life of your beer by understanding the aging process.

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Topics in This Week’s Episode (38:58)

This week I welcome Colin Kaminski. Colin is the co-author of the Water: A Comprehensive Guide for Brewers (Amazon affiliate link) as well as a professional brewer with Downtown Joe’s in Napa, California. Colin also designs professional brewing equipment at MoreBeer. He has been brewing since 1998.
We discuss during the podcast Colin’s last appearance in episode #293 where we covered reducing oxygen in the finished beer.
We begin by discussing some of Colin’s recent activities including his work with Downtown Joe’s and MoreBeer.
Colin introduces aging and talks about how beer ages and goes bad over time.
We discuss oxygen and why it is a critical component in aging and also how Trans-2-Noneal (T2N) plays a central role in creating the wet cardboard/catty flavor we associate with stale light beers.
T2N has a flavor threshold of about 100 parts per trillion. Colin puts that number into perspective.
We discuss how T2N combines with oxygen to make a beer age over time.
Colin discusses the role Lipoxygenese (LOX) plays in forming T2N and how LOX in the malt is the root source of the T2N problem.
We talk about how some malsters are creating malts that are LOX free or LOX negative so they lack the precursors that create T2N. He also says that some of these malts are SMM negative as well and can prevent the occurrance of DMS. This allows a brewer to shorten the boil.
LOX, oxygen and T2N are only one mechanism for aging. Colin tells us some of the other factors that come into play when trying to maximize the shelf life of your beer.
We talk about IPAs and hops and why so many IPAs lose their peak hop aroma in a short period of time – often 30-60 days.
Colin discusses some of the other interesting projects he is working on at MoreBeer.
He provides his closing thoughts.