Aging and cellaring beers up side down ? is that bad?

That's probably not a good idea. You'd be forcing the cap/cork more than usual. So if it is a beer known for leaking, or even exploding, when stored in a normal fashion you'd have more to worry about.

 

Given that I can pull at a bottle cap all day without it moving, I doubt ~12-22 oz of liquid is going to be too much force.
The larger surface area of the bottom vs. neck of a bottle could potentially speed up oxidation, but I don't think I'd worry much about that either, esp if bottle conditioned. Maybe you're more likely to break a neck if bottles jostle around in a case?

 

Just out of curiosity, why would you want to store them upside down?

 

It's probably fine but why on earth do you want to do it?

 

I wouldn't, caps aren't meant to come into contact with liquid, and laying capped beers on their side or upside down does nothing for the beer. Most modern corks for beers are cheap and agglomeration-type, and don't meet much liquid contact if any to keep a seal- older style whole cork corks like those in cantillon are the types to lay on their sides, but I don't know of many brewers outside of Cantillon that use them. That's my $.02 on the matter.

 

Girardin ships their gueuze upside down. Not sure what importance that is, but it is an example of a well-respected brewery storing their corked beer upside-down.

 

I don't get why anyone would store their beer upside down. It's not even practical so why do it.

 

Ok, so apparently there are people that do this. I recently spoke with someone who held on to the GI sisters and has been cellaring them upside down for the past few months. He said it was to redistribute the yeast and possibly kickstart some more secondary fermentation. He was then going to go a couple months with them right side up. His store mostly deals with wine, so is this just something he is carrying over from wine bottle celllaring?

 

big "lol no" out to that one.

re: OP's question, it's probably bad due to contact with cork / cap, but it also probably doesn't much matter.

it's definitely not going to magically put more fermentables in the beer and give rise to a second fermentation though.

 

So yeast won't go dormant in a bottle and then become reactivated if it is exposed to new areas of the bottle or if it was dislodged from underneath a caked on layer of sediment?

 

Fermentables aren't being introduced but there are still some in the beer, otherwise bottle conditioning wouldn't work. Resuspending the yeast could perk up some dormant cells if the conditions are right.

But storing them upside down for that reason doesn't make sense because it will still settle out no matter what the position. It's the act of turning them back over that would do anything for the yeast.

 

I've never seen this. All of our cases have them laying on their side (Hanssens does this too).