Drinking your cellar.

Beer drops off, no question. Most beers people cellars for long periods of time will actually taste worse with 3 years on the shelf than 6 months.

Drink your damn cellars. Hoarding is a sickness.

 

my group is having a tasting this weekend actually to this end...the "it's in my cellar but I feel like I shouldn't drink it alone" tasting is Saturday

 

As someone who is fairly new to BA and trading and building a cellar, I'm not an advocate of holding on to every single bottle. There are brews, especially barrel-aged ones, that have aged long enough prior to bottling. They're ready to drink. Recently, I have consumed two great locals, GLBC BA Blackout Stout and Hoppin Frog BA Naked Evil. Both of these beers I tried at their release point one year ago and then I consumed them each after nearly one year in my cellar. I have to be honest...they didn't change enough to warrant hanging on to them. I think building up a large collection is silly and is hoarding (as mentioned above), especially if all you're gonna do one day is trade them away some day for some new, rare beer...and then you're gonna just hang on to that forever and you spent all your time collecting and not drinking....anyways....cheers...and happy drinking!!!


andrew

 

I've been drinking mine down quite a bit. Most of my stuff tastes good with a couple years on it, but fresher is for the most part better. Only necessary to horde BCBS, KBS, etc. All others may as well drink.

 

Most beers do not improve.
Some beers fall off.
Some sour.

My cellar is diminishing by the day.

 

My "cellar" is as large as it is mostly for want of time/opportunity to drink it down. The number of beers I'm intentionally aging is orders of magnitude smaller than the number of beers I have.

So I agree, drink it, don't save it.

 

I agree. Drink your shit. I've seen a couple beers that didn't necessarily fall off after a year or two, but I've seen very few that have gotten better. If you enjoy a beer fresh, why risk that? I honestly wonder why people don't cellar average or bad beers and hope THEY get better.

 

My cellar has turned out to be quite practical. In order to save money, I drank it off before I went on a four month trip to Europe. Two years later, 100+ bottles strong, and a three month trip to Europe coming up, I'm about to start drinking it off again...As for the more traditional reasons for cellaring, I don't think the "beer falls off" argument is a very strong one against having a cellar. I'd wager that most people who cellar 50+ bottles at a time have been doing it for a while, and have a good idea which beers will hold up and which ones will not, after tasting them fresh. Also, I always drink a beer fresh if I have only one. The cellaring process is to see how it changes, and you can't do that if you've never tried it fresh. Lastly, a particular example of a beer that falls off or a beer that holds up or even gets better is also no argument for or against cellaring. I could list at least a couple dozen on both sides of the fence and the debate would be no better for it.

I guess my point is that concluding from over-generalized statements like "beer drops off" and "cellaring is hoarding" that you shouldn't cellar beers seems extraordinarily ignorant to me, probably coming from the mouths of people who have never done it themselves and experienced the joy of one of their favorite beers becoming something almost entirely different, sometimes worse, sometimes better, and (if you do it correctly) almost always at least equally good.

 

Because after you do it for a while, you get to know what certain characteristics in certain styles do with age. You can begin to pick which beers you think will age well and which ones don't. I don't know anyone who cellars who just throws everything in there and blindly hopes, which is what most people responding to this thread seem to think people do.

 

I've been infected....

 

A few of my personal rules.

I never cellar a beer I have not had.
Whales are for sharing with as many good friends as possible.
Everything in my cellar is for drinking.

The only beers I have aged or will continue to age for prolonged periods of time are lambics and old ales.

Having a cellar is a blast. Mine would be enormous if I didn't drink from it regularly. It's a wonderful feeling to pull out a nice bottle for friends who appreciate it. That's what it's all about.

 

Having a decent sized cellar with variety is wonderful when you have friends over for beer. "Let's go down to the cellar and pick out some beer." I heart my cellar.

 

I need to get busy on mine , It's going to take awhile.

 

My cellar has become very focused over the last couple of years... I'd say 90+% of the beers down there are things I've had before, strongly prefer aged, and plan on aging for 3-30 years (there are very few beers that I prefer 1-2 years old... maybe just some American sours that need a little time to come into their own). The rest are things I'm curious about aging based on my impressions of them, or beers I'm not so much cellaring as storing until I can drink them (they've got a special holding area).

That said, I always encourage people interested in cellaring to seek out already aged beers and try them to get a sense for what they do and don't like. Cellaring a beer you enjoy right now isn't a good way to make it better... it's a way to get a different beer whose relationship to the original you may not enjoy.

 

This is worth repeating.

 

Here! Here! Drink that beer!

As much as I hate to think about it...AB/MC have such a stronghold politically and socially that I don't think they can ever be knocked from their tyrannical thrones. Way too much muscle for any company (or group of companies) to handle. Even though I prefer craft, I do recognize Budweiser as king - not of beers, but of powerful beer business.

 

The main reason I hang onto a beer is to make sure the booze mellows out before I drink it. Sometimes it's something I've had before (I drank a 2011 4 Calling Birds by The Bruery last Xmas and hung onto one to try again this Xmas), sometimes it's not (2011 Cuir by the Bruery because it was $30 and can't afford to buy a second). When I spend a big chunk of dough on a bottle whose ABV is over 10%, I want to give it the best sporting chance of tasting as smooth as possible so I try to give it at least a few months to mature. For example, DFH 120 tastes like crap right off the line IMO. You want to give it at least a year before it becomes drinkable. Comparing and contrasting a fresh bottle's characteristics and an aged bottle's characteristics is really a secondary reason for me. This all being said, my "cellar" doesn't grow past 9-12 big bottles plus 9-12 small bottles at a time for the same reason explained in a previous post

and because I live in Florida where basements are nearly nonexistent so I have to settle for a closet which is not fully satisfactory for aging beer.

 

Nothing wrong with drinking your beer, but mine isn't anywhere near large enough to be something I worry about. I play it pretty conservatively, so only a few beers from the imperial stout / barleywine styles are actually there for long-term aging. Initially I cellared some of the bigger Belgian beers, but I discontinued that a while ago since I didn't see consistent results. I hang on to cellarable special releases until I have an occasion or a friend who is interested. Overally though, I'd say about 3/4 the bottles of beer I intend to continue cellaring are Expedition Stout, and I hope to keep growing them (I love the beer year round)