Birthday beer?

[kiwijimbob]

Hey guys,

My little fella will be 3 in a couple of weeks and I was thinking of putting down a beer around his birthday to drink on his 4th and 5th birthdays. Does anyone have any suggestions as to a beer that would a) last this long in the bottle and b) actually benefit from 12-24 months in bottle?

I am an extract/kit brewer - happy with adding interesting hops, speciality grains etc, have a fridgemate, but am not really up to partial mashing or AG brewing yet. The working two jobs and the 3 year old both conspire against that right now (mind you I can feel it'll happen sometime in the future).

Thanks for your tips in advance guys,

Jimmy

[KEG]

i'd suggest a belgian strong ale for something that will age that well. have a look through these; a lot of these styles can be made pretty well with extract and specialty grains - not to mention other additions like brown sugar, candi sugar etc.

http://www.bjcp.org/styles04/Category18.html

in addition, have a look at this thread:
http://www.homebrewandbeer.com/forum/vi ... =11&t=2031


another possibility would be an IPA:
http://www.bjcp.org/styles04/Category14.html

[kiwijimbob]

Hmm - I'm thinking a Leffe Blonde type would be a good idea.

I was given this as a recipe to try:

1x Morgans Golden Saaz Pilsner kit (1.7kg)
1.5kg Light Dry Malt Extract
0.5kg Dextrose
20grams Tettnang hop pellets (steeped for 10mins)
Whitelabs Belgian Ale (WLP550) starter (I already have some of this in the fridge from a previous brew)

Does this strike you as a good recipe for storing for 12-24 months?

Would it benefit from the addition of candi/brown sugar?

Any suggestions?

Otherwise - does anyone have a good IPA recipe they could suggest for my purposes?

Cheers guys

Jimmy

[KEG]

replace the dex with candi sugar, boil 10g of the tettnanger for an hour, add the other 10g with a minute or so left, and make it to 20L

leffe blonde isn't very hoppy at all - mostly malt and yeast driven, but there needs to be some bitterness there to back it up; rather than boiling the whole lot for a shorter time (which would give bitterness but also a fair bit of hop flavour), i'd boil 10g for an hour - leaving all the bitterness but little to no hop flavour. the 10g at the end could even be omitted, but with a year or two of age, should go pretty damn nicely anyway.

[kiwijimbob]

Thanks KEG!

That sounds like a great idea! I'll get on to that as soon as I bottle the Kilkenny clone I've got going.