PRO TIPS on storing beer & freshness.

Great video. A friend just scored some Tree House for our beer drinking crew, so perfect timing on this coming out

 

Good stuff. Thanks for posting!

 

Rule 0: Date the f**king cans/bottles.

 

Very informative, I’m going to stop cellaring my stouts and unfortunately most stouts I buy sit warm on store shelves for many months most of the time before I buy them.
He didn’t really touch on fruited sours, wether kettle or mixed fermented. I generally never have kept kettle sours anywhere but fridge and drank within a week or 2 but the fruited lambics/Gueze/wild ales etc, I prefer somewhat fresh as I find the fruit sweetness tends to disappear into a more dry beer over years of cellaring. To each their own, but that would have been a nice addition to his tutorial.

 

What about canned brett beer, I believe most have some sort of liner in the can but can you “cellar” them for months/years?

 

Maybe was a good example of staying in one’s lane? I don’t think we particularly need the advice on cellaring lambics from the guy who produces 8,000 variants of basically the same hazy IPA, coincidentally also one of the styles that drops off the fastest.

There is some debate over how to best store lambic, but when talking about lambic Jean Van Roy is def a source I trust. Cantillon chose to utilize a former bomb shelter. So in sum, they chose to store in a cool, dark place with the bottles on their side (perhaps the most debatable part of how to store lambic).

Here’s an article I enjoy about the “Cantillon Bomb Shelter”. Long term goal is to cellar 60,000-80,000 Cantillons at a time. Yes please.

http://drinkbelgianbeer.com/breweries/cantillons-bomb-shelter-cellar

 

Thanks for posting - great video and perspective.
I very much appreciate his/their attention to detail and quality obsession.
2 weeks ago I purchased a 6-pk at 2 different breweries that was packaged in February...3 1/2 to 4 months since packaging, not cool.
I own my responsibility and should have checked but didn't - good reminder and lesson.

 

Good Lord do I hate “best by dates”.
I had two beers this evening, Summit Twins Pils & Surly Furious, both w/ best by dates.
Put the date canned & let ME decide the damn “best by date”…FFS!!!

 

I was told to bury them in sand.

 

I’ve been working at getting my beer inventory down to a manageable level for literally more than a decade. At one point it was upwards of 350 bottles and cans, some dating back to circa 2010. I maintain an Excel spreadsheet for all beers I have in stock, complete with style, ABV, vintage, packaging and/or “best by” date, and other pertinent data. I have stored every single container that I could fit in the beer fridge in my garage, based primarily on each beer’s ABV (the lower the ABV, the more critical it was to keep it consistently cold; a few older, higher-ABV bottles might have gone in there ahead of newer, lower-ABV bottles, but as a general rule the assumption has been that higher-ABV beers could better withstand slightly higher temperatures). The remainder was stored in boxes in the garage, usually still at a max temp of 50-60 degrees most of the year. I would move cellar beers into the fridge, one by one, as I consumed the cold beers from the fridge. The real challenge has been fresh-hop season, when I’d get a bunch of lower-ABV beers that absolutely needed to stay cold, so then my cellar rotation would be put on hold for a month or two every fall as I consumed those beers as fresh as possible.

Today I am happy to report that I have only two bottles that have not yet made their way into the beer fridge: one each of The Bruery Saule and Etain (both above 16% ABV)—they are sitting next to the fridge, waiting their turn. The rest of my beer, exactly 140 bottles/cans according to my spreadsheet, is now in the fridge, where it will remain until I drink it.

For the most part even the oldest vintages have fared pretty well—a couple flat barleywines and maybe one or two imperial stouts that had a little more soy sauce character than I’d have preferred. I never intended to amass such a large collection of beer, and I’ll never do it again—but I also can’t say I regret doing it. Almost none of it has gone to waste and I think I’ve learned (or confirmed, anyway) which types of beer tend to age well and which ones don’t. And it’s kind of a special feeling to casually reach in and grab a bottle that was packaged during the first term of the Obama administration.

I will watch this video but I expect it will more or less confirm my experience storing beer over the years. Cheers!