What I’ve learned so far about aging and cellaring beer: Part 4

Since I’ve already covered the Whys, the Wheres, and the Whats of beer cellaring in the first three parts of my series, I’m going to finish up by answering these three final questions:

When should I cellar beer?

How do I cellar beer?

Who should cellar beer?

When should you cellar beer? Anytime, obviously, as long as you’re sure that the integrity of the beer is intact. Again, you should be purchasing from a reliable, trustworthy merchant. You should be trying to figure out when the beer your purchasing was bottled, and try to purchase it as close to the bottling date as possible. Doing everything you possibly can to minimize environmental effects is your goal.

I have also started to puruse the various brewer’s websites to try and time my purchases as close to their seasonal release dates as possible. I want my cellar collection to reflect the different seasons and have a variety of brews that are released all throughout the year. I am also timing my purchases so I will have different vintages of the same beers, so I can compare year-to-year releases.

How do I cellar beer? The major question in this group is simply “Do I keep the damn bottle standing up, or do I lay it down?”. There seems to be no debate on the question with capped beers, just keep them standing up. The questions arise when you start to consider corked beers. Beer Advocate’s Cellaring 101 page has a very good write up that seems to leave little to doubt that standing a corked beer up is recommened. However, many experienced cellar enthusiasts seem to enjoy the “corked” flavor that is imparted to a brew by laying it on its side. I think that there may be some validity to both approaches, and I’ll be exploring this issue later on.

I also have started to “tag” my beers with information about when I cellared the beer and where I bought it from. I figure this will be useful info as my collection gets larger and larger.

Who should cellar beer? Another one of these seemingly obvious questions! My answer is to this question is “patient people”. This is a hobby that can be measured in years. Your cellar is not going to do well if you have a revolving door on it. You need to have the patience and displine to just let your beer sit for a long period of time.

In most cases, I think you’ll be rewarded because of it.