As I have said in other posts, I like to drink beer. I also keep a beer cellar in which I store and age some higher alcohol and sour beers to let them mature. I have a bone to pick with craft brewers and it is Bottle Sizes. Recently I decided that I was going to break into my cellar. When I started to look through my selection I ended up not opening anything. The problem I faced was most of the beer in my cellar are high alcohol and/or in 22 ounce or 750 ml bottles. I understand that craft brewers feel like they need to differentiate themselves. A lot of breweries view the large format releases as a way to do this, but I seldom want to drink 22oz of a high abv beer. I do however enjoy drinking 6-12 ounces of those beers. There are a few breweries that have been successful in making their beers stand out and appear special. Goose Island, for one, releases four of their "Vintage Ale" series beers in 4 packs. The packaging makes these beers look special.
Also Rogue releases some of their beers in small 6.4 ounce bottles. That format defiantly stands out on the shelf. I will also mention Dogfish Head because they bottle their super high abv beers (120 Minute IPA and World Wide Stout) in 12 oz bottles. I will share one of these 12 oz bottles with someone else, if they were packaged in bombers or 750's I would be hard pressed to find a reason to open them. Bottom line is that if you make a great and interesting beer then craft beer drinkers will not only buy it, but seek it out. Cheers ~ Ben
Yup you read that correctly. A beer cellar. No, not wine....Beer. You may wonder; Didn't those old Budweiser commercials teach me that old beer is bad beer?
Well for the american light lagers that Budweiser produces, that may be true. For some craft beer its just not the case. You may also ask why would you age a beer? To be honest, not more that a year ago, I would have been asking the same question.
My fascination with aging beer started with my third batch of home-brew. I decided to make an imperial stout. I also decided that I could craft my own recipe. Now this may not seem like such a bad thing. It was.... Trust me, it was as if I had just learned how to cook and I decided I could make a five course meal. When the stout had finished fermenting it tasted like bitter, over-roasted jet-fuel. So not wanting to dump it out, and because it was 9% abv, I decided to let it age. After about 9 months I put it in bottles. After 11 months it was a wonderfully smooth stout, with just the right amount of alcohol warmth. I still have several bottles and they are still getting better.
That was when I thought:
If age improves a bad beer, how would it affect a great beer?
Age can take a good beer and make it great. Just a few months can take the rough edges of a young beer and smooth them out to make a much more rounded experience.
Beer cellars have been around for a very long time. It is tradition in the Belgium Trappist Abbeys. Some of these breweries have been aging their beers for years before releasing them for sale. They realized that the beer tasted better after a year or more of maturation.
It is really easy to cellar beer at home.
The most important aspect of aging beer at home is choosing the correct beers to put in the cellar. Some styles are not meant to age. In fact some styles of beer begin to deteriorate as soon as they leave the brewery. This is where the phrase "brewery fresh" comes from. Examples of styles that should not be aged are IPA's (or any Hop Forward Beers), American Light Lagers (or most light low alcohol, low flavor beers. The beers that will benefit from age are generally higher alcohol, and bolder malt flavored styles. Such as Barleywine, Old Ale, Imperial Stouts and most sour beers.
The next thing to consider when starting a home beer cellar is where. The most important things to consider is temperature and light. You do not want to cellar your beers in direct sunlight. Ultraviolet lights will create a chemical reaction that make beer skunky. You also do not want to store your beer in your attic. The optimal temperature to keep beer is at around 54 degrees F and with as little temperature swings as possible. If you don't have a room at 54F thats not a problem. If you have a basement or a closet that is surrounded by interior walls it should work fine. Lastly always store your bottles vertically, do not lay them on their side. Beer will age better if stored upright, it keeps the amount of surface area of beer in contact to air to a minimum. It will also allow for any yeast sediment to settle to the bottom of the bottle.
The last, and for me the most interesting, point to consider is Vertical Tasting. A vertical tasting is when you take several vintages of the same beer and taste them back to back. This will really give you an idea of how a certain beer is holding up. When designing your beer cellar for vertical tasting the most important thing to do is buy at least two, preferably three, bottles of each beer that you want to age. This would give you the ability to drink one bottle now (who doesn't like some instant gratification?) one bottle to drink in a year, and one to drink once your will power fails. The true trick to vertical tasting is to get three bottles of the same beer year after year.
Cheers
~ Ben
P.S In the event of a Zombie Apocalypse screw all of the above and drink the best beer you have first!
