Do people save/store beer like wine?

Yes, they do. It is called "cellaring".

See this forum:
Cellaring / Aging Beer

 

Yes, many stronger beer styles lend themselves very well to cellaring/aging. Usually bigger beers, such as imperial stouts, barleywines, and so on; although many more styles can be aged as well.

 

Yes many beers can be aged. I prefer almost every style fresh but I may be in the minority when it comes to a few of them.

 

Don't believe these tricksters. The answer is no.

 

Yes, many styles can be stored for a long period of time. Most are high ABV beers or beers with wild yeast strains and bacterias that will develop over time. Anything hop forward such as IPAs and Double IPAs are not the best candidate for cellaring since the hops, which are the showcased flavor, will drop off over time.

 

Basically only to brag about what they have, same as basement guitar player's "studio" or over-weight rich guy's shed of mtn and road bikes...

got to compensate somehow....

 

Wait---you mean I don't have to do that for my wine too? Damnit what a waste of time.

 

Some Mexican cellarmen actually have the best of both worlds: a cenote!

 

FT: 2008 Abyss
ISO: A Backhoe

 

I'm rather fortunate in that the place I live in is a split level with my bedroom half underground and with a walk-in closet with shelving. Makes for a great cellar to store RISs, Barleywines, Old Ales, etc. Even is Summer when it's 90+ degrees with 90%+ humidity, that rooms stays nice and cool with little light.
Right now I've got 10 different limited and highly rated beers down there waiting for the right occasion. Hoping to add more to it.

 

Annnnnndddd welcome to your crash course in BA forums

 

Woaa man, ten limited beers is far too many, and your thinking of adding more? That's crazy! You should drink what you have first before you decide to buy any more.

 

I enjoy trying beers others have aged, friends or beer stores. But I don't buy lookin at beers.

 

There are a few different things people do when storing beer that all kind of look the same from the outside.

There's stashing beer to drink later -- a limited or seasonal beer that someone would like to drink out-of-season. They're not looking for the beer to change. If you want to do this, store it around 40 degrees F and drink within a year at the most. Don't bother with really hoppy stuff.

There's hoarding beer, either to have a satisfying aesthetic response when you view your own collection or for trading/selling purposes. BA is generally unsympathetic to this practice (at least, in public).

There's aging beer in order to alter it (not necessarily to improve it in any objective sense, but to turn it into a different beer that the ager may prefer). This falls into four broad categories: aging lambic, which is its own game and if you're doing it you probably already know what you're going for. Maturing beer in the 6-24 month timeframe -- to my palate, for example, many American wilds improve after a short bottling period. A number of American RISs also develop over this timeframe as hops flavors fade. There's aging beer for 2-5 years -- if someone describes a beer as "hot" and is hoping to reduce that impression of fusel alcohols, this is probably the timeframe they're looking at. Old ales and English barleywines develop their characteristic toffee/treacle notes in this timeframe. And there's cellaring beer for over 5 years -- at this point, the drinker hopefully likes the characteristic flavors brought on by oxidation, because they're going to start tasting them. Soy sauce becomes a more prominent component, particularly in darker beers. Leather, tobacco, and sherry/madeira flavors emerge. Some perceived tartness can occur regardless of the presence of microbes.

My recommendation is always to follow your own palate -- people taste specific flavors differently and at different intensities, and reading reviews of aged beers isn't going to be informative unless you already know what you and don't like. Taste aged beers with a group so you can get different opinions (on that specific bottle -- age will amplify bottle variation) and see what others are tasting that you're not. If you like the idea of aging beer, find someone who will share a few bottles with you so you can find out e.g. that you can't stand the soy sauce notes in a three-year-old RIS before you go buying cases of Expedition. And if you're trading for aged bottles, ask the person if they can provide you any details about how the bottle has been stored in the interim. I don't buy into the 55-degrees-is-best hypothesis for beer specifically, but you'll at least want to know if it's been in a basement or a shop window.

 

I haven't consumed a beer since '99 because when I buy a new bottle it's instantly used to insulate my home. I guess I cellar?