Texas cellar question

Discussion in 'Southwest' started by icetrauma, Jan 19, 2013.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. starkmarvelo

    starkmarvelo Initiate (0) Jan 20, 2010 Texas

    This sounds like a badass science fair project. Seriously, age beer at different temps and such and then do a blind tasting. Anyone have kids in middle school? That way well have a good 4-5 years of cellaring.
     
    BK1017 likes this.
  2. omnigrits

    omnigrits Initiate (0) Jun 1, 2006 Texas

    No probs, although we'll have to agree to disagree about passed down knowledge, and I did know about filtered/unfiltered beers, I was thinking mostly about factors from outside the bottle. Now I'm about to have a few beers myself in the shape of a 2010 Old Guardian that's sat through three Texas summers (and winters) in what neither you or I would probably call ideal cellaring conditions :wink:
     
  3. H0rnedFr0gs

    H0rnedFr0gs Initiate (0) Mar 12, 2012 Texas

    Love this thread guys. I really appreciate learning from the collective knowledge.

    I've had a similar thought about the reaction of beers with active things in them like Brett. If you stir the bottle (by shaking it or flipping it upside down). I posited that a daily stir might yield more reactions by rousing the yeast but I suspect these reactions would require near constant shakes to affect taste. Anyone with info on this side of scientific study on beer reactions?

    For my cellar I live 8 feet below ground at a 100year old+ building and my closet has a ambient temp of 65...although I tried to convince my GF that I could attach a window unit to the closet door and seal it up to keep it even colder but she didn't want her clothes to be frozen every morning...and she somehow convinced me not to.
     
    blatherbeard likes this.
  4. jacobbocce72

    jacobbocce72 Initiate (0) Dec 18, 2011 Texas

    Ha! I do science fair every year with about 120 or so kids. This has crossed my mind on several occasions. Too bad you would have to go through some serious, serious paperwork to allow a 12-13 year old to legally experiment with beer.
     
  5. icetrauma

    icetrauma Initiate (0) Sep 7, 2004 Texas

    Don't champagne house do a quarter turn on every bottle at certian intervals? I thought I saw something on TV about this when they did a segment on Moet & Chandon.
     
  6. omnigrits

    omnigrits Initiate (0) Jun 1, 2006 Texas

    I do know that in times past when brewers were making a strong ale like barley wine they'd roll the barrels to wake up the yeast inside when the fermentation had slowed down, just to get a little more out of the critters. Maybe they still do. Brett eats up a lot of the sugars that regular brewers yeast can't so maybe it doesn't need so much activation, and some of those tuns that lambics are matured in at places like Boon and Cantillon would need a bulldozer to roll them.
     
  7. reverseapachemaster

    reverseapachemaster Zealot (722) Sep 21, 2012 Texas

    Among my homebrewing I brew lambic. Rather than brew a batch, bottle it and repeat or brew several batches and blend I brew a single batch, bottle part and refill fresh wort, so that any given year of bottling will contain a mix of every year of beer fermented. It produces a very different blend than straight lambic (obviously) but also I think it has slightly different character than gueuze because you don't have several distinct beers blended together but more of a continuum of blending. I guess you could say it's not technically a solera because I'm not using multiple vessels but the effect is the same.

    There is a brewery...I forget who it is... that actually does have a multiple barrel solera system for some of their sours.
     
  8. reverseapachemaster

    reverseapachemaster Zealot (722) Sep 21, 2012 Texas

    I don't know of any brewery that still does this. Especially not with breweries with large foeders. As you say, you'd need a bulldozer (or two) to move them.

    The reason it was done for strong beers is because the yeast were poor attenuators and when fermentation stops prematurely rousing the yeast is one of the first steps to restart fermentation. Breweries now have better yeast controls to avoid those problems but it's fairly common advice for new homebrewers who underpitched their yeast.

    Brett isn't lazy like sacc. It gets itself motivated and chews up everything it can find. It doesn't have the problems being overloaded with food sources like sacc can because brett can metabolize pretty much anything but the water in beer, even ethanol. It has an extremely high tolerance for alcohol (at least at undistilled concentrations).
     
  9. omnigrits

    omnigrits Initiate (0) Jun 1, 2006 Texas

    It kind of sounds like a cross between a solera and krausening... which are sort of the same thing I guess.

    Edit: no, maybe they aren't.
     
  10. reverseapachemaster

    reverseapachemaster Zealot (722) Sep 21, 2012 Texas

    It's not krausening because the beer that gets bottled is completely fermented out. It's done. It could all get bottled. Krausening is used for bottling purposes.
     
  11. Clonies720

    Clonies720 Initiate (0) Oct 24, 2012 Texas

    I'm actually running an unofficial experiment aging beers @ 55F in a temp-controlled chest freezer vs. the closet. I'll crack em open in a few months and compare.
     
  12. xpimptastikx

    xpimptastikx Initiate (0) Oct 8, 2008 Texas



    Yep, they claim it has to do with the yeast and a carbonation build up. They used to lose a lot of bottles to carbonation bombs. They also used to store bottles in large dirt mounds, but now they're stored in large wooden rectangular contraptions that hold the bottles at a certain angle and they use machines to rotate the bottles. The champagne caves stretch for miles and miles under the city of Champagne and are truly amazing.
     
    icetrauma likes this.
  13. MattCinatl

    MattCinatl Initiate (0) Aug 30, 2009 Texas

    I don't have any links to pertinent studies, but I suspect that rousing bottles/barrels/etc works by breaking up flocculated masses of yeast (but rousing doesn't seem likely to break the bonds between neighboring cells in a significant percentage of the total number of yeast cells). Flocculation is a poorly understood facet of yeast cell biology. We know that mannans and flocculins (structures on the cell surface) bind, causing yeast to flocculate, and that flocculins are activated by a cell signaling process triggered by low nutrient levels, but there are a lot of unanswered questions. Why do certain strains flocculate more quickly? Why is the flocculation of certain strains so sensitive to temperature?

    Also, I think there is another mechanism at work here, maybe the redistribution of oxygen in the headspace of the vessel? Just an idea.
     
  14. BruceBruce

    BruceBruce Initiate (0) Dec 4, 2011 Texas

    Lets be honest, Wine storage facility in Houston, Fridge in Houston, Fridge in Austin, another Fridge in another place, a guys house in California am I missing some lol
     
  15. icetrauma

    icetrauma Initiate (0) Sep 7, 2004 Texas

    A fridge? :sunglasses:
     
  16. BruceBruce

    BruceBruce Initiate (0) Dec 4, 2011 Texas

    lol
     
    icetrauma likes this.
  17. Ahaley

    Ahaley Initiate (0) Dec 24, 2009 Texas

    Keep all my drinkers in my extra fridge and retrofit an interior closet with r-matte plus insulation and shelving. Put a small cooler system in there and keep it at cellar temp.
     
  18. lokieman

    lokieman Initiate (0) Jan 20, 2011 Oklahoma
    Deactivated

    Kegerator with a shelf that I installed set on lowest setting. Holds from 50-57 degrees and works great except it's too small. Have fresher beers in the fridge and a couple boxes on the floor in the pantry. I'm shopping craigslist for an old, cheap fridge to put in the garage. Running out of room real fast....
     
  19. DanzBorin

    DanzBorin Initiate (0) Apr 11, 2012 Texas

    You'll eventually outgrow a beer fridge too.
     
  20. ThirdEyePA

    ThirdEyePA Initiate (0) Nov 7, 2011 Texas

    I'm at that point now. I keep what I plan to drink within a few days to a week in the fridge. The rest, I have a cabinet under the counter in my kitchen that I keep the "aging" beers in. My fiance got me a wine fridge for X-mas and I wound up taking it back because it didn't have enough room, bad ratings, etc. Now I'm looking for an something to store more beer in. I'm pretty much looking for the most room I can get, and still control the temp to between 50-60. Looking to spend around $200-$250 total if anyone has any suggestions.
     
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.