Verticals... what's your excuse?

I always thought the "point" of a vertical was to do a "vertical" tasting. After all, beer is for drinking not collecting.

 

I suppose you could have multiple beers from the same year to solve this issue.

 

If a beer is good for aging, like Dark Lord, it's a good indicator to know how long until it reaches optimal flavor. It's not an exact science due to yearly variations, but it's good enough for me. For instance I liked 2010 and back, so I plan to age my 2013 at least 4 years.

 

Buy a case, drink one every 6 months, buy another case the following year, drink a bottle from both vintages every 6 months, buy another case following the following year, drink a bottle from the three vintages every 6 months, buy another case following the following of the following year, drink a bottle from the four vintages every 6 months. Etc etc, etc....

 

I'm just starting to cellar, but I have multiple beers from a year if I plan to cellar or do a vertical. For me it's not about collecting or aesthetics. I would like to see how beers age with time, and have a nice vertical to share. For example, I just bought eight NC Old Stock ale 2013, and will save at least four for the next 1-6 years. I also have a couple Sophie and Matilda 2013, among other things.

I fall 100% into your asterisk. I think most BAs will fall into the asterisk category of wanting to do vertical tastings. I haven't done a vertical yet, but I imagine it might be hard to part with the beers you've raised like your own children for 6 years or so. I obviously don't have children

I see you're getting at a point I've been thinking about. Our hobby is with consumables. People who collect coins, or whose hobby is biking, spend their money on collectible or functional items that retain their value. Beer, unfortunately, does not leave the body how it entered (delicious beer). Makes it hard to justify spending big bucks on a single bomber, and harder for others (e.g. my GF) to understand. But I don't want to thread jack, I'll just leave this here, for now.

 

I think it comes down to the whole "You can't have your beer and drink it too" idea. I got my hands on a single bottle of cherry rye...now what?

 

I understand the concept of verticals, but they've never really interested me. Then again, I sometimes feel like I'm a broken toy on beer advocate misfit island.

 

Because when I say I had a 09 - 12 Dark Lord and a 08 - 12 Abyss on the same night my friends are really impressed.

 

I plan on doing a 10 year vertical of Stone IRS from 2009-2019 just for the sake of doing it. I don't really care if the bottle(s) are past their prime, I just made it a goal, have stuck with it, and I am excited to enjoy the actual event.

 

We did a 2000-2010 a couple of years ago and are preparing our livers for a 2001-2013 Old Guardian vertical.

 

I like to horde them in my closet next to my Pokeman cards

 

The Old Guardian will be really interesting. Look forward to hearing about it.

 

You are munging together collecting and doing tastings. Weyerbacher here in PA does two beers that are both sold on their own and aged in Bourbon Barrels. For both of those beers (Old Heathen and Blithering Idiot) I've also purchased the Bourbon Barrel aged version (Heresy and Insanity). Having done this 3 years in a row I was able to organize two separate tasting eveings in which a small group of us did side-by-side verticals to develop a better understanding of the effects of bottle aging and the effects of Bourbon Barrel aging.

This was enjoyed by all involved and didn't put any kind of a hole in any collection since the whole point of acquiring the beers was to do the tasing sessions, not to build a collection. The tastings required some advance planning but now that both of the tastings are done I can acquire the beers in the same pattern again, or not, with no sense of loss or destruction of a vertical/side-by-side tasting.

 

Yup yup, and same here, I decided to bring mine to a bottle share next month. Gotta share the love.

 

That sounds awesome. How did the 7-10 year old beer hold up?

 

Couple of reasons for me with my stone RIS vert. One, the fun of hunting down each year with trades and beer shopping. Two, Stone is one of favorite breweries so its cool to have a vert from them. Lastly, drinking them and see the difference and how each has changed. Still hunting down 07 and prior

 

At this point the excuse is I haven't gotten around to drinking them.

I'm finding more and more that verticals are a waste of time in my opinion. Mostly a novelty.

 

The main reason I have verticals is that there are beers that I want to age that come out yearly. So I have verticals of them just because I buy them every year.

Drinking a vertical in a sitting is just something that's fun to do at a tasting. Like having a blind style comparison, or whatever, having a theme can be fun.