HOWES CAVE — A year ago, Randy Thiel put 2,400 bottles of beer in Howe Caverns, and last week, with the rhythm of a guitar and a fiddle, he dusted them off and popped a few corks.
"We’re here to wake up the beer," he said to a crowd of a few dozen as they filled the small space at the entrance to the cave. "I hope you guys have a thirst."

Indeed they did. The crowd drank down the Abbey Ale as they danced to the tune of the fiddle. Barbara and Joe Floeser, a couple who line-danced on their first date, cut across the hard stone floor as the band played a waltz.
"We’re trying to be on the alcohol circuit," laughed Ed Lowman, one of the musicians, with his fiddle still resting in the crook of his chin. This was the third time that he and Tom Wadsworth played for what has come to be known as a beer awakening.

Brewery Ommegang, based in Cooperstown, has been aging beer in the cave for almost a decade, according to John Sagendorf, Howe Caverns’ general manager. People used to age their beer and wine in cellars, he said, and, when Ommegang called to pitch the cave-aged beer idea, he went right along.
Years ago, Ommegang made a special beer for the Farmers’ Museum in Cooperstown, said Thiel, brew master for Ommegang. A while after the beer had been introduced, museum staff found a couple of cases in the museum’s basement and asked if it was still OK to sell. "I tasted it," said Thiel. "It was good."
So the brewery started aging some of its ale in the cave. Although it makes no technical difference where a beer is aged, said Thiel, "On a very human level, you know that beer has been in a place, it adds to the experience of it. It can’t be quantified, but it’s still real."

The fermenting process increases the alcohol, said Sagendorf. The Abbey Ale that’s been in the cave for a year is about 8.5 percent.
"The uglier the bottle looks, the more people want it," said Thiel, holding a musty bottle with a crooked, stained label that just came out of the cave.
Having gone to school for microbiology, Thiel said that being a brew master isn’t much of a stretch. "Yeast is a microorganism," he said earnestly. At the end of the day, he wants to craft something tangible, he said. When he was working at a medical lab, he said, "I caught the brewing bug, so I thought I better make a career out of it."
Ommegang, which Thiel helped build, specializes in Belgian-style beers. "You can drive across the country in three hours," he said. "But there are more than 100 different brewers in Belgium."

Darker beers, like Abbey Ale, are better suited for aging, Thiel said. The next beer to be cave-aged is Ommegang’s Three Philosophers, a brew that got its name because anyone can get philosophical after a few beers.
The guitar sang a solemn folk ballad while cheeks turned rosy and the cave filled up with chatter. And Sagendorf said, "I think it’s absolutely marvelous."