Building a Stellar Cellar

One word: gueuze.

 

Cellaring is the path to the dark side.

Cellaring leads to hoarding. Hoarding leads to over the hill beers. Over the hill beers lead to suffering.

 

And hoarding leads to your wife questioning where all fridge space went to.

I started my cellar with a mix of Sam Adams, Oskar Blues and CCB items. A couple of years later and a few trades under my belt, I have a cellar that I'm happy with. Trading has helped me acquire brews that I'm proud to showcase when my friends come over. I suggest you start by purchasing beers you love and slowly start purchasing limited or seasonal brews that show up at your local store.

Sorry if I went a bit of topic with trading, but many past trade partners have hooked up me up with some fine brews that have helped me build my cellar.

Cheers!

 

Good luck building your cellar!

 

The best advice I got was to start slow; I wish I would have listened better. Each beer ages a little differently, so it's important to try them regularly and see how they change with age. See if you can find a store that sells mini verts or attend some tastings.

Otherwise, at this point in my beer cellaring life, my advice would be pick something you enjoy, or maybe 2-3 different ones, and that has a reputation for cellaring well. Don't buy too many and make sure to open one every 3-6 months. Notes were helpful to me when doing this with Old Boardhead and Bigfoot to see how they evolve over time. Old Boardhead was a great one for me; at the time I was beginning to cellar I could drink an '05 with three years and go buy more if I really liked it.

Good luck!

 

Buy half a case of a few beers. See how they do over 1-3 years. Revisit cellaring after that time.

♫ Your everlasting cellar, you can see it fading fast
So you grab a bottle or five that you think is gonna last
Well, you wouldn't know what ages well if you held it in your hand
The things you think are precious, I can't understand

Are you reelin' in the beers? Stowin' away the Rares
Are you gatherin' more each year? Do you think anyone cares?
Are you reelin' in the beers? Stowin' away the Rares
Are you gatherin' more each year? Do you think anyone cares?

You been tellin' me you're a trader since you were seventeen
In all the time I've known you, I still don't know what you mean
The release at Dark Lord Day didn't turn out like you planned
Shelf gems you'll trade for rarity, I can't understand

Are you reelin' in the beers? Stowin' away the Rares
Are you gatherin' more each year? Do you think anyone cares?
Are you reelin' in the beers? Stowin' away the Rares
Are you gatherin' more each year? Do you think anyone cares?

You spent a lot of money and you spent a lot of time
The trip you made to Belgium is still etched upon your mind
After all the things you've done and seen, you've got no exit plan
Oxidized whales are useless, I can't understand

Are you reelin' in the beers? Stowin' away the Rares
Are you gatherin' more each year? Do you think anyone cares?
Are you reelin' in the beers? Stowin' away the Rares
Are you gatherin' more each year? Do you think anyone cares? ♫

 

I actually have something else to say on this. What I'd do if I were new would be to integrate myself into a local tasting group with some vets who have cellars (by sharing good stuff, obviously). Try their older beer, see what you like. (Alternatively trade for aged beer, but that doesn't always work.) Then you can skip the experimentation part (unless you want to do it) and go straight for what you really want.

Thanks to a lot of good friends I've tried many aged beers, and realized that there are only a few things I want to age:

1) Gueuze/lambic (especially 3F and Cantillon)
2) Big Bruery beers (M3, BT, etc)
3) Select RR sours (Beat, Temptation)
4) Eclipse variants

Other than that I'm just storing the beer until I can get around to drinking it. But now that I've come to that realization it lets me focus my priorities. Do I really need to buy 6 Abacus? No, a pair will do fine. Do I want Stone IRS? Not really, so I can skip it. I hardly buy any beer that's not something in those 4 categories.

My last odd cellaring suggestion is to get a kegerator. It might seem odd, but having some nice, easy-drinking, hoppy beer on tap definitely made me focus more on only buying things I like, rather than flavors of the month. Do I want the latest Stone collab when I have a keg of Sucks? Not really, Sucks is better and like 1/4 the price. And with a keg you're a lot less likely to drink down your cellar just because you want to drink SOMETHING, lets you save it for special occasions.

 

Yeah, if you don't want to trade your options are a lot more limited. I think an issue with trying to do this on a budget is that the stuff you can get (like bigfoot, old stock, stone IRS) that people commonly say ages doesn't really get that good and everyone and their brother ages them, so they're not hard to come by. In Texas you're extra hobbled because I don't think you get 3F, which is something that's a shelf beer that will age into greatness. Sharing is sort of weird in that you do want to bring something exciting, but what's exciting to people will vary wildly. I don't particularly find aged bigfoot exciting because I don't really like it, but someone else might, who knows?

Anyway, if your budget is super tight I would actually advocate not starting a cellar, drinking cheap-but-good beer, and saving up. Really cellaring is something you do as a hobby when you have the spare change. But if you still want to, and liking belgians, get Orval and Rochefort 10. Age Orval for a year or two, Rochefort 10 can go longer.

 

I generally do a lot of beer shopping when i travel. Easy if driving, a little harder if flying, but even when flying i'll do a six-bottle shipper as checked luggage. This has really helped me build a cellar with a lot of variety beyond the beers i can get locally, without doing a lot of trading.

 

For aging, I'd start with Barleywines, Lambics, Geuezes, and big abv imperial stouts.

Imperial stouts are tricky. Not all benefit from aging. For example, I had a Stone IRS tonight that was a few years old and it was clearly over the hill. Yet, things like Dark Lord and Black Tuesday (15% abv+) have held up magnificently. Also, IMO, stouts that are heavy in coffee flavor are generally better fresh than aged, as the coffee tends to fade. The same can go for hoppy barley wines as well. If the hops are contributing a lot to the beer's taste, it's probably better fresh.
If you think a beer has too heavy of a booze flavor, it will probably benefit from age. For example, I had a 2011 Sebago Single Batch BBA Barleywine that was very good fresh, but the whiskey flavor was too strong. One year on it and it was near perfection.