Am I wasting my time without a real "cellar"?

Since you're drinking it all within a year, you're fine. At that point, you'll have a good idea of whether you'll ever want to age a significant number of bottles in the future.

 

But the statement is true.

Your logic assumes that the beverage ages the same regardless of the temperature. However, they age differently at warmer temperatures (different chemical reactions take place faster or slower at different temperatures), so putting the beverage in an oven to age them faster would produce a different result than letting it age slowly at 55 in a cellar.

 

The temperature is also important because the chemical processes that contribute to aging proceed differently at warmer temperatures than at cooler temperatures. So warmer temperatures not only age the beverage faster they also change the nature of the process and can give unwanted characteristics to the beverage.

 

(not directed at drtth specifically, but also all others that want to "dispute" what i said...)

ok, ok - some cute semantic parsing, guys. but what i was reacting to wasn't the specific word construction "age faster", but the underlying concept (or rather, conceit) that aging at a warmer temp will somehow allow one to get the "same" result as doing so in a cellar, but merely at a faster rate. this kind of mistaken reasoning is often implied when many people say that warmer temps will give you "faster aging". i just want people to stop using such phrasing because of the high potential for misunderstanding.

better to say something like, "it will age faster AND differently", or maybe "it will age faster AND degrade faster".

 

So let me get this straight, UV lamps in my cellar are a good idea?

 

Totally agree. Would have saved a lot of words had that statement appeared in your first post.

 

For 99.999999% of the people on this site: Keep it in the coolest and darkest spot in your house. You are now aging beer just like 99.999999% of the people on this site.

 

I can't speak to the chemistry here but I am someone who keeps their beers in boxes in a temp controlled storage unit which is 72 F. I have some beers from 2007 that are still holding up well after being stored at this temperature. I was worried that there would be a more significant dropoff due to the higher temps but I have not experienced it yet. My guess is that the temp effects will depend more on the type of beer you are storing. Old stock, for example, will likely not age too differently where as a more delicate beer, a saison maybe, would see more adverse effects from the higher temps. Again, this is just a guess.

 

Well, any increase in temperature will cause a bottle to age faster AND differently.

 

I pop them in my closet right now in boxes and away from light. Seems to be doing just fine.

Once I'm less broke, I'll make a nicer solution. For now, I think steady temperature and no sunlight is my main goal. Plus, I just started, so I've only around 22 bottles or so.

 

I have a graduate degree in mechanical engineering and lover of fresh and aged beer! As far as the chemistry and physics go, here are some of the facts that people have hinted to and, maybe, I can add some clarification to this debate.

I would firstly like to point out 1 fact that people tend to over look. Cellar temperature is not some magical temperature at which beer oozes happiness; it is simply the ground temperature and that was the coldest steady temperature people could store things at for most of civilization and by tradition, the way people have tried to keep things. We've found it works well, so why change things up?

Some people have brought up the pressure temperature relation, that is generally pretty negligible. Beer (or almost any fluid for that matter) is 'incompressible' so increasing temperature (and by PV=nRT, pressure) really just increases the pressure in the remaining volume of air and carbonation in the bottle. For the ranges that were are talking about, its a pretty negligible effect on the chemistry of the beer.

The temperature that a beer is stored at does have a significant effect on the beer, but it is unique for each beer and for the range of temperature that your talking about. The reason stems from the fact that temperature is equivalent to molecular activity of any substance (the beer). So with that being said, storing a beer at a higher temperature, increases the activity of the chemicals in the beer and does accelerate the 'evolution' of the beer. That can be good or bad.

• The good would be that storing them at higher temperatures because the added energy of the molecules is like pressing fast forward on beer evolution. Some of the characteristics of aging the beer come out nicely and faster by aging it at slightly warmer temperatures because the activity has been accelerated.

• The bad is that most beer is brewed to be stored at cellar temperature. With this in mind, the composition of the beer is set up so the constituents of the beer 'play nicely' with each other at around cellar temperature. The easiest example of this is hops. Hops don't really play well with being stored at warm temperatures because they are organic molecules and the alcohol tends to dissociate the carbon chains faster at warmer temperatures (among other reasons). But, there are many different ingredients in beer and all of them evolve differently at different temperatures (both good and bad characteristics!) Some chemicals can dominate the evolution of the beer in certain temperature ranges where as others tend to be more passive. So, by having a beer at a higher temperature, you are evolving the beer differently than it is intended.
• This also applies to aging beer at colder temperatures. By dropping the temperature and the energy, you are again changing the dominating reaction of the beers. On the whole, it tends to hit the 'slow motion' button on most of the reactions, but some of them aren't as effected as others.

With all of that being said, it is entirely up to opinion if you like it better to age it warmer than cooler. Aging deep dark stouts with lower IBU's will probably age at warm temperatures more similarto cellar temperatures than something more balanced (even on the stout spectrum) but i have found several beers I prefer to age at slightly warmer and its all a matter of trial and error.

To answer the OP's question, you're not wasting your time. Your just doing it different than the other people. I've aged my fair share of beer in the closet and had some great results. You might find some that age great and some that don't but that's always the fun part of it.

Sorry for the rant, hope this helps! Feel free to BM with any science questions regarding beer!

 

every time i hear the temperature debate i think of all the vintages of special release beers that people find sitting randomly in various liquor stores. more often than not they turn out to be fantastic and i'm pretty damn sure the proprietor isn't keeping his store at "cellar temperature".

 

i've done a couple side-by-sides of recently-purchased 2002 JW lees with bottles of 2002 that i had stored since at least 2007. the ones obtained recently off a store shelf are much more oxidized.

 

Is that the scientific research that found cardboard flavor/oxidation in your basic 3.2% lager after storing it for 3 years at a really high temperature?

 

don't you get it? it is all about trade value these days...you don't see:

FT: DL aged 4 months at 90 degrees | ISO: BA Hunah or similar rarity

you see...

FT: 2007 DL | ISO: BA Hunah or similar rarity

those of us in the know, actually have full verticals with a case of the recent stuff aged at all temps for a few months. this way we don't need to waste our time holding beer for years and years to see what happens. it is a lot more economical and the ticks are just good.

 

?

what kind of response are you expecting from such a post? you can follow the link if you want to know what it says... do you have any insight about "good reactions have lower energy requirements," (or they don't) or do you just want to Be Part of The Fun?

edit: @cosmicevan, yeah the overlap and paradox created by ticking + trading + cellaring culture is kind of amusing. it's a bit of a hegelian dialectic though... 1) it's so old and the cellaring conditions so uncertain, that 2) it will be difficult to Really Get The Tick, but then again 3) i'd be crazy to actually drink it anyway, since i need it to bag bigger whales.

 

A yes or no answer?

 

Some good points in your post, but organic molecules from hops don't play that well being stored at cellar temperature either. Both cellar temp and room temp are 'warm'.

 

The passing off of warm temps as a cellar seems to be done on here more often than I'd like to see. Sure cellar temp evolved from what was available to store and chill consumable products but there is a reason that it has stayed around this long so far into the modern day refrigeration era. Talk chemistry all you want but Id rather keep my beer completely chilled than warm. Cellar temp is preferred. I will not condone storing beer warm for extended periods of time.

 

All the mishmash hippity hop aside, I've "cellared" around 20 bottles at a time for just over 3 years now. The temperature has varied between like 60 and 70 degrees on average. One summer I put all the bottles in the fridge since the temp went up above 70.

Not ideal conditions but I have yet to have a beer sour or spoil on me (well, besides 2009 Abyss but we all know that was the brewery's fault). I've had many imperial stouts, barleywines and dubbels/quads turn out great from my "let em sit in a dark closet" cellaring method.

My understanding is that dramatic temperature shifts is what negatively affects the beer. As long as the ambient temperature isn't high I think it's all good. I wouldn't risk it if I knew that I was wasting my money on beers that won't mature.