Few people know that some beer can be aged for many years, just like good wine. To be age-able, a beer needs to have (most of the time) a higher alcohol content and a recipe that creates flavour complexity. If it has those things, a beer can be cellared for many years as it blends, improves and transforms. As a certified beer geek, over the years I have built up a personal collection of cellar beers, purposely set aside for consumption during some special occasion at some unspecified point in the future. My cellar currently has around 100 bottles of beer quietly maturing.

Thus emerges the problem. Setting the beer aside is easy – buy it, stash it and forget it. The question is not letting the satisfaction of storing special beer overwhelm the whole point of the exercise: to at some point enjoy and appreciate the fantastical flavours these special beer produce. So, a few weeks ago (as I was socking away a few new purchases) I made a promise to drink some of the older ales I have set aside, and pulled out a select few bottles for sampling at opportune moments.

One of the first was a bottle of Vintage Ale from Fuller’s, England’s last traditional independent brewer. They make this beer once a year, and produce only 150,000 bottles, attractively packaged in a ruby cardboard box. They have been brewing Vintage Ale since 1997, but the first year available in Alberta was 2006. So I pulled out one of my bottles of the 2006 vintage to see how it fared after four years.

I picked a quiet Saturday night when the family was otherwise occupied, giving me an hour to gently savour its rich flavours. It pours a deep reddish copper with a surprisingly impressive head building a thick blanketof foam and lacing down the side of the glass. Its carbonation was still lively, despite four years of seepage. The aroma is dominated by toffee and caramel with a strong support of plum, cherry, raisin and other dark fruit. I also pick up some sherry notes and a little oak in this complex aroma.

The initial flavour matches the aroma. It is soft and sweet with toffee and sherry jumping out. There is a lot going on in the flavour – fruit, malt sweetness, sugar and alcohol warming – yet the flavours seem to flow into one another, without any sharp edges. I suspect the four years of cellar time ate away at the boundaries and blended the flavours. Hops are virtually non-existent.

What I particularly like is how this beer builds as you sip. In the first sip, at the front of my mouth, it seems almost thin, but as it works its way back the complexity and body build, ending with a richness that makes you want to sit by a fire and sip it slowly.

At four years of age the sherry and port qualities (which are desirable by-products of the inevitable oxidation) are just starting to make themselves known. I imagine in another three or four years, the beer will present even more of those qualities. Good thing I have two more bottles to sample in future years.

Fuller’s Vintage Ale is a marvelous version of an English Old Ale. It is not quite as strong or as rich as a barley wine, another perfect aging beer, but has enough substance to carry the heft of many years on its shoulders. Some reports say the earliest versions of Fuller’s Vintage Ale are only now really hitting their full stride.

If all the beers in my cellar are as lovely as this one, I will grow old a very happy man. I suggest you hit your favourite beer store and pick up multiple bottles of the latest vintage and stick them aside for at least a couple of years. You won’t regret it.