Aging in the refrigerator?

The refrigerator is fine, but the only caveat is that it will age at a much slower rate.
If you really intend on aging I would go with the closet. Unless the temperature in there is above 70 degrees.

Ideally you'd want to find a storage place that would stay at around 55F.
There's plenty of topics regarding this in this subforum already.

 

I'm actually keeping my French Vanilla Militia in the fridge because I haven't yet decided when I want to break it open and I haven't had a DL variant before. Depending on what your intentions are, "aging" in the fridge can sometimes be a good thing. But laying beers down for cellaring purposes, just find the darkest/coolest corner of the house/apartment/whatever and keep them there.

 

I wouldn't sit on FVM too long. Got lucky enough to get one last year and opened it the day after DLD. It was absolutely incredible and I'm not even joking. Honestly one of the best beers I've ever had. My point is I can't imagine letting it rest would do it any good.

So find someone that will enjoy it as much as you, open it and report back. I'd love to hear your thoughts!

 

Bumping this old thread with a question:

Has anyone arrived at a crude ratio comparing the rate of change of a beer stored in the fridge to the same beer kept in a cool cellar? Would you guess that, say, 2 years in a fridge = 1 year cellared in terms of the beer's maturation, or maybe 1 = 1.5 or perhaps 1 = 3?

I have little experience with conscious cellaring (as opposed to just holding onto certain big beers for years and years before getting around to 'em), so I figured I'd ask all you cellaring veterans. Cheers!

 

It would depend on the temperature of the fridge I'd think. Let's assume the cellar stays around 60F more or less, if the fridge is set to something like 38F then you are going to have little if any activity from residual yeast/bacteria, and I'd think markedly slower oxygenation reactions. If it's not a living bottle I think you still would have maybe a 1:1.5 cold fridge:cellar ratio (if the beer begins to fall off at 5 years in the cellar you might be able to stretch that to 7 or 8 in a cold fridge), if it is a lively beer then the ratio is much more dramatic because that brett activity or whatever is going to be stalled so you're really going to have a totally different aging process.

If the fridge is kept at something like 50F then I think it's pretty close to a wash, mostly you're just hedging against some freak heating in the cellar but that same 5 year beer in the cellar isn't likely to suddenly age well to 6 years just cause it's a little cooler.

 

Helpful answer, thanks!

 

I agree with this.

I have a total of 4 beer fridges, all mini. 2 have temp controls, a third is a wine fridge (with a turn dial, but not a legit temp setting), and the fourth is just a mini fridge.

One of the two with actual temp controls is in the bar - Since people will be reaching for beer, even though that is nicer, I keep beer ‘for public consumption’ in there, rather than my good beers.

The other temp control is also in the bar, but it is designed to be a wine fridge, so it won’t go quite as cold. That’s NP - a better optimized setting for long term aging. I keep my prized 750s in this fridge, and remaining space holds some large format saisons.

The wine fridge without the temp control but keeps a nice steady temperature holds all of my other beers that will he kept for long term aging as well, and includes a LOT of BCBS (in all its’ iterations).

The last (the mini fridge) is a cold bugger, and I keep it NOT at freezing, but closer to about 42ish. I put anything in there that I might want to just drink on any particular day, and also have it hold onto a few beers that MIGHT sit around for awhile, but I’d like to be kept cold so flavors fade less (than with no cold storage), like stouts with coffee, or Prairie beers (which tend to not age well), and saisons (since I drink them relatively frequently).

This does not say much about what you asked, other than to say that steady temperature and temperature itself are what matters for long term aging. The colder the fridge, the slower the progression, and the longer flavors like coffee and vanilla will hold on. Thus, I have arranged the beers in my fridges based on how I want them to progress.

The beers I have left out of the fridge are those that do fine with longer term aging and no specific temp controls (like BCBS). Also, I have a basement that stays cool and pretty consistent, and my fridges are there also, so all things considered, anything left out will still do fine.

Before moving to this house, I used a closet for years, and that worked fine. I used a dedicated fridge for long term aging of anything I was protective over, and put beer in the “main fridge” when I thought I might drink it that week. Everything else went to the closet.

 

Thoughtful and very informative answer. My question for you is...how the hell high is your power bill????

 

I don't think the kind of conversion formula youyare looking for is possible. If a cake is to be baked at 350 degrees for an hour, you can't bake it at 525 degrees for 40 minutes.

 

It's fine, honestly.

Two of the mini fridges are in the "bar", which is in a "sunken level" that is already cooler. The other 2 are in the actual basement, which is even cooler. They don't seem to run that much, and only the 1 "actual mini fridge" is kept "cold." The others are set to 45-54, which is not that much colder than the areas, which are much closer to about 60F.

I have a freezer in the basmenet also (standup), and it seems to barely run except after I have opened it and removed something.

 

This is probably true to some degree (if you like the way J W Lee tastes after 10 years at 50 degrees you probably can't recreate that by keeping it at 80 degrees for 5 years) you can definitely slow the progression of anything that has active populations in it (lambics, wild ales, brett beers) by keeping them cold. And depending on the particular flavorings used in a stout or some such that you are cellaring you might have some stuff that degrades quite noticeably if it ever gets up to 75 or 80 that would hold onto that flavor significantly longer if it was kept at 55. But there almost certainly isn't going to be some universal conversion formula for 'relative years of aging at x degrees'