Duel Zone Wine Fridge Temperature Options? (First World Problem)

Discussion in 'Cellaring / Aging Beer' started by wordemupg, May 15, 2019.

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  1. wordemupg

    wordemupg Grand Pooh-Bah (3,187) Feb 11, 2009 Canada (AB)
    Pooh-Bah Trader

    I managed to talk my wife into letting me get a big wine fridge to use for a beer cellar. I have the option of two temperature zones and can't quite decide what to do with them .
    I was thinking big high ABV stuff like stouts and barley-wines, old ales, ect... set at 55-60ish?
    Maybe store all the lover ABV stuff like lambics, sours, gueuze, ect at 45-50ish?

    What would you do with the option of two cellar temps?
     
    #1 wordemupg, May 15, 2019
  2. unlikelyspiderperson

    unlikelyspiderperson Grand Pooh-Bah (3,966) Mar 12, 2013 California
    Pooh-Bah Trader

    My thoughts are that you want the mixed/wild fermentation stuff to be a little higher and the dark beers a little cooler, basically reverse of your plan. My understanding is that lambics and sours and such evolve with age because of the other organisms besides plain old brewer's yeast that can still live under bottle conditions, so getting them too cold stops the aging process. Where as the big dark beers are essentially degrading over time (although certain forms of this degredation can have subjectively positive results) so if they can be kept a bit cooler you can keep that degredation from happening too fast.
    I think you're two temp ranges seem spot on and it might be interesting to put a little bit of each category in both compartments and see how the same beer ages in the two different conditions.
     
    #2 unlikelyspiderperson, May 16, 2019
    Immortale25 likes this.
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