Cellaring Tips for a Sour Nube...

Unpasterurized sour and funky beers will slowly evolve over time if kept at a reasonable temperature for continued microbial activity. It's one of the joys of drinking these types of beers - seeing how they change over time.

 

Usually aging will up the acidity level and reduce any added flavours like fruit. Thus it's generally best to drink one early and decide from there. Gueuze ages very well though.

 

I also have a question for cellaring sours. Should I be aging my Cantillon bottles(and other sours with corks) on the side, or standing up? I've had a bottle of Cantillon that had alot of mold on the inside of the bottle. Could it have been that the cork was bad, and let air through? Would letting the beer hit the cork prevent the air from coming through? Not sure on this, I've been aging almost all my beers standing up.

 

I've got all my sours, including Cantillon bottles, stored upright. That is one of the questions that you will never get a definitive answer to, because for as many people that will tell you upright, there are just as many people that will tell you on the side. I would also imagine if you did a search on this or any other beer forum, there are probably a dozen or so other threads with this exact same question posed, and you can see the differing answers there as well. I chose upright because thats what the space I keep my beer in allows, as well as reading a few people saying that some of their bottles stored on their sides have leaked, which I want no part of.

Probably not easy to do with Cantillon, but maybe a fun experiment with some easier to get bottles of Lambic or Geuze like Tilquin, would be to buy two bottles, lay one down and keep the other upright, and age them both for a couple years. Then buy a fresh one and drink all three with some beer friends. I think I might actually go out and buy bottles this weekend!

 

Are you sure it was mold and not yeast sediment?

 

Yeah I'm sure that it was mold! It made my friend/neighbor throw up. I know what sediment and mold are, and the mold was inside the bottle. But it was only on the top where the cork is, and it wasn't even touching the beer. It was green and white, I shouldn't have tried to drink it, but we did.

 

After years of storing upright and having multiple Cantillon corks break apart on me while opening, I've decided to follow their lead and store my Gueuze like my wine.

 

Like 3 weeks. I opened a bunch of Cantillon bottles with ooze on top that were bone dry on the bottom. Half of the corks split on me. Figure storing sideways will keep the corks swollen at least.

 

I will say when watching the video about cantillons "bomb shelter" of sour beers that they are aging. All of the sours were stored on their side. This seems like a definitive answer to me in that if Cantillon ages their beer on its side then we should do likewise.

 

Sorry about not posting this the first time.
http://drinkbelgianbeer.com/breweries/cantillons-bomb-shelter-cellar

 

Ha, no, not at all. Shelton actually just started distributing back in Missouri late last year, so we have gotten a couple shipments of Cantillon, but it went crazy fast. That's why I said I would try it with something like Tilquin instead. I can just go grab bottles of that whenever I want around here.

 

Cantillon should definitely be cellared horizontally like wine bottles. Its really only corked DARK beers that run risks of off flavors when stored horizontally. The dark malts in beer can become harsh, acitic or autolytic (burnt electrical cord flavor from yeast eating other yeast cells) much faster when the beer is stored horizontally. Cantillon beers, almost universally, do not have dark malts in them and should be stored horizontally because of the importance of preserving the cork, especially to prevent ullage from extended aging.

 

What? Care to provide any sort of back up for the bolded claim? Every time I read a new post about how to store beer, I'm amazed at some new "rule" that suddenly crops up.

 

I drink fruited sours fresh because I like the stronger fruit flavors. Non-fruited sours I don't mind sitting on for a few years (or more).