Wooden Hell

My experience with this beer is that there's some bottle variation. The bottle I had last summer was mediocre. Not terrible, just not great. We had one a month or so ago and it was fantastic. As for what it takes to get one, something like a Millennium Geuze would probably get it done quick.

 

Fallen off or not, it's still going to take a heck of a lot to land one.

I have to wonder if storage condition isn't a major factor. You tend to hear about variation with many beers after 4-5 years, and I'm sure many people do not have ideal basements for cellaring...

 

I am actually in the process of trading away my last bottle along with a couple other minor beers for multiple h.ertie variations that I have not tried.

It was about a year ago when I last had it. At that time I thought it was still quite good.

 

last had one back in january.
while still very good it was showing signs of a good bit of oxidation

 

when one can discuss bottle variation in Wooden Hell, one is a baller...

 

FTFY

 

Man, I hope people aren't really sticking their beers in closets for "cellaring". Makes me scared to ever trade for a vintage...

 

They are and you should. However, I'd imagine it's less of an issue with older members who actually have a beer like Wooden Hell. Anything from the CBS/Rare release to now I wouldn't trust unless I knew the person had an actual climate controlled place to store them. I used to be a closet cellarer but came to the realization that if I can spend thousands of dollars on beer, I can afford to by a fridge with a temp controller. With all the noobs around, the best thing to do is trade for the beer you want at release. Then you have control of the cellaring environment.

 

I had a pour of this @ DLD from a gracious BA, but thought it was really over the hill. That said, it was also at 6:45am in line...so...maybe my brain wasn't totally awake yet.

 

No, Jason. It wasn't your imagination. That crap is beyond repair now.

 

Not only that but think of the possibility of how many times a bottle has been traded from closet to closet. Stuff like blabaer, IP, and DDG gets worked hard on the streets.

 

This is kind of what I assumed people did in less ideal climates. I realize not everybody has a stable New England style basement, but a cheap 50 bottle wine fridge only costs a couple of hundred bucks. Sticking them in a closet for 2 years just ruins them completely, so what's even the point?

But, scarily, you're probably right...

 

That's a big reason why I don't go after the true white whales. Re-trading always makes me nervous - all it takes is one a-hole along the way to treat it poorly or refill it with something else. And never having had the beer, I'd never know the difference. Even trading with a legit trader, you never know who owned it beforehand.

 

People with those units are suckas.

 

Not all of us can be beer prodigies with two phenomenal full-size upright wine cellars to store our Whalezzzzzzz. Some of us are just destined to be suckas.

 

Get rid of the wife. Unleash your true potential

 

I think it depends on what you're talking about. My guess (and this is pretty much ONLY a guess) is that lambics are far less susceptible to this than other beers, because the various bugs will metabolize the oxygen that's producing the off flavors. And since increasing temperature (to a point, anyway) isn't going to get the bugs producing off flavors, the connection between temperature and increasing oxidation is broken, at least somewhat. I don't have any real evidence for this, except that we all know that Cantillon's corks are absolute crap, and yet you need to get pretty damn old bottles before they have any gross oxidation notes, which can happen alarmingly fast in malty beers.

This also explains beerandraidersfan's Bigfoot cellaring results (which is that temperature doesn't matter), Sierra Nevada's quality control is so ridiculously good that there's just no oxygen in there to cause those reactions at temperatures. Of course there's more to it than oxygen (and other oxidizers) but I think that's a big part of this.