Cellaring as a business.

There are places like this in most larger cities, think of storage lockers but for wine (and beer). They have existed for a while now for wine collectors, but with the current popularity of beer, have expanded to market to that audience.

The ones I have seen basically offer different size lockers depending on how much storage you need. It basically works like storage units, but made for bottles instead of stuff. The facilities are temperature controlled and keep out sunlight. If you search online for "Chicago wine storage facility," for example, you'll get some ideas. Most places charge by the month from what I have seen.

However, I don't think they "age" the beers for you. They simply provide a secured, controlled, off-site environment to store them in. Which beers to age and for how long is still up you.

 

They provide climate controlled storage space. You still have to do all of the work related to cellaring.

 

there are lots of these businesses already - they cellar clients' wine. Same concept.

 

No, haven't actually used them. I looked into it back when I got into wine a few years back and before I really got into the beer scene. I haven't looked into for beer though.

I don't think there would be any criticism, it's more a matter of space, money, and convenience. How many bottle do you plan to cellar? Are you living in a house, apartment, own, rent? I recently was asking about beer cellar setups on here and got some great advice, as well as being pointed to some past threads that discussed how you could make a very cost-effective cellar at home. So look at the cost of setting up your own cellar versus paying a monthly rental fee for the cellar, the convenience of having it at home versus having to drive to get your beer, etc.

 

Wine offsite storage has been in the news lately - there have been two really big stories. This one was an inside job theft of client's wine in Seattle:
http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2022445167_winerecoveredxml.html
Another story where someone torched one resulting in $100 million in losses a couple years ago near Napa:
http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Vallejo-wine-fire-gets-arsonist-27-years-in-prison-3112595.php

The lesson here is, if you have a small site with a LOT of $$ worth of rare beer/wine, you really need to have super tight security there. You'll lose your ass getting sued if someone has a nasty agenda.

 

27 years? Sad that you'd do a fraction of that for drinking the wine and running someone over.

 

What "work" is that? Besides "not drinking it" ?

 

Moving the boxes in and out, inventorying, etc.

 

Buying the beer...

 

There are definitely facilities that offer these services (e.g. your wine is shipped to them, they unbox, tag, inventory and shelve it, and you can view your cellar online and request bottles to be removed and available to you), but the cost is generally quite high, and would almost certainly not be worth it for beer (if they'd even do it for beer, which they probably wouldn't). Besides, one of the joys of cellaring is digging through musty old boxes and finding something you probably should have drank three years ago

 

I can't see storing beer in a commercial facility as being cost effective unless you are buying in volume with the intent on aging/hoarding for resale. It's not too difficult to create an environment in your home to safely and effectively store and age a few hundred bottles.