Need to cool my cellar down

I would add to this that the cellaring process is a fairly straightforward one, in terms of what goes on in the bottle. The two major things that aging does is continues fermentation and oxidizes the beer, both at extremely slow rates.

Will the balance between the two processes really be thrown off that much by a gradual 25 degree swing each year? My guess is no, although my evidence is anecdotal - my brother-in-law keeps some beer at his parents' house in a laundry room built into their garage - so the temperature swing there is more like 45-75, or even 40-80 over the course of a year, depending on how hot/cold the summer/winter is, and daily temperature swings are much larger than they are in a typical cellar. We have opened several bottles that have been in that room for 6+ years, and some have been absolutely wonderful.


I think as long as your mean temperature is somewhere in the 50-65 degree range, you're fine. Beer is a hearty beverage, it can take a lot and still be fine on the other end.

 

I posted this in another thread, but there is evidence that the development of "cardboard" flavors is extremely temperature-dependent. The exact evidence was detectable amounts after a few days at 40C (104F), while there was none detectable after 4 months at 20C (68F). This work is typically done on AALs so it's not exactly applicable to our type or cellaring, but I find it informative. You really don't want to get beer too hot.

That seems to get pretty mixed reviews on Amazon, mostly for being out-of-date. But I'd definitely like to pick something up to learn more about this, the stuff in there has worked for you?

 

Very much so -- make sure to get the 4th edition (2007). There's a bunch of miscellaneous sections that are specific to wine, but still have a lot of interesting information (specific numbers on ullage acceleration due to temp variation, etc). I've just moved from New England, where I had a basement space that I was able to insulate/cool/etc using some of his advice, to a basementless apartment in Denver, so now I'm just keeping everything in a wine storage facility.

 

Cool, thanks, I'll check it out. Also, it's funny, I saw your location and thought you weren't always from Colorado. Weird how I can remember shit like that...

 

Heh, well don't get too used to it, I'm going to be continuing west and moving on to SF in about a year. Going to have to track down some storage out there as well, though I expect wine storage facilities are pretty common (and probably expensive?).

 

Look forward to meeting you then! There are facilities, and from what I understand they're somewhat expensive, though someone who actually uses one could better inform you. But I'll let you know that it IS possible to find someplace with a basement, or at least what I have (which is only ~1/2-way underground, but the climate is so temperate I only see swings from like 60-68 anyway). So don't abandon all hope on that score yet.