How much cellared beer is too much?

I hate to be the one to bring this up, but what if the zombie apocalypse leaves you trapped in your cellar with only your beer to sustain you? You want at least enough beer to last until the zombies run out of fresh brains and start to weaken and die off. So I'd say a six-week supply is the absolute minimum.

 

What if your cellar isn't in the basement?

I take back my first comment. I think I'd prefer to imagine the self-multiplying cellar theory.

 

The moment you are calling it a cellar or collection is probably when you have too much.

 

I'm new to aging beers, though I have nice little collection going. I'm planning on giving most of these bottles 1 year. If anyone knows if it's stupid to cellar any of these, let me know why. (Hell, I'll drink it tonight)

Abyss 2012
Sucaba 2013
Barrel Aged Big Foot
Eclipse Elijah Craig 12yr
TenFidy (can)
Silva Stout (from Jan '13)
Stone Old Guardian 2013 (not smoked)
Old Rasputin XV
AVBC Wild Turkey Stout (picking up today)

and I tossed some random singles from 4pks of different imperial stouts (Narwhal, GF Double Stout, Old Raspy)

 

Sorry, didn't mean to hijack. Seemed like the appropriate time to ask the BA folks for any aging input.

Back on topic: While my cupboard is full, I don't think I have too much. Pretty sure my wife disagrees.

 

How much cellared beer is too much? Umm...when you turn the light on and still can't see? Nah...when the door won't close? Nah...when you're out of money? I give up.

 

Barrel aged beers typically don't need to be aged - they're already "pre-aged" in the barrel, and ready to be drank when they are released. There are some exceptions when they are too hot (like BCBS), but typically they're only going to get worse.

Sucaba gets mixed reviews with age, don't see the point in aging the Eclipse as that series is low ABV for a stout, definitely wouldn't age the Silva Stout given how long it sits in barrels, Old Raspy anniversaries are ready to go fresh... Nobody really knows how BA Bigfoot will do.

Abyss, TenFidy, and Old Guardian are the only ones I'd keep in my cellar from that list. (I don't know anything about Wild Turkey Stout)

All of that said, if you're only talking "one year", all of those should hold up fine. But "one year" becomes very easy to turn into "three years", and then your BA RIS is really 5 years old, and it's oxidized and gone downhill...

 

I've started buying less and separating bottles. I put around 60 bottles (mostly lambics and some De Dolle beers, a few Westvletern bottles from the brick and a few '12 BCBS) in a relative's wine cellar and the rest I keep at my house. Makes it easier to force myself to choose what I actually want to age because I think it will improve/change in a way I'll like and what is just backlog that needs to be consumed in the next year.

 

I have about 2500 bottles of "slowly dying" beer in my cellar and I'm just giddy about it.
I just got back from a Vermont trip and I'm happy to say the only bottles that will add to my cellar that I bought was HF Norma and GI Cherry. All the other beer was "drink quick" IPAS.

I just browsed your reviews and the majority of vintage beer you reviewed gets very high scores.
Kinda contradicts the "dying beer" theory

 

Thanks amigo, I appreciate the input.

 

Yup. Or it doesn't. I've had some trainwrecks of aged beers, which I don't usually review, as the bros don't take kindly to dinging a beer because of it's age.

I've had plenty of beer that's 'held up' OK, very few that have gotten better.

What's your over under on how many of those 2500 are improving?

 

Also, using my reviews as a data point is a bad idea. I'm usually pretty loaded and have a notoriously terrible taste in beer. My fridge right now has more Private Stock than anything else in it.

 

About 270 in the cellar. Lots of sours, high abv stouts, limiteds ie Parabola, Sucaba, Abyss, Darkness, and those sorts. I would say excessive is when you have no where to fit the bottles anymore. One thing you can learn when cellaring is how long is too long to cellar certain beers i.e. KBS, I would say that 2 years is the most to do that one. Additionally, when buying limited/special beers one should buy multiples to drink one fresh and see if the beer is even worth aging. Cheers!

 

Most have been a completely enjoyable experiences. The thing is, part of my hobby is the experimentation. A few+ hundred of the beers are bourbon county/Ba4thD/BBBW - improve greatly with age. Some just change laterally.

I can't think of many at all where I opened the beer and thought that aging it was a bad idea.

In addition, people don't understand that a beer goes through peaks and valleys. A beer might be great fresh and then not so good a year down the road, But 2 years, 5 years, 7 years, it may be better than when fresh.
Too many blanket, semi uninformed statements saying most beers don't age. All theory or conjecture.

 

i estimate I have about 7000 bottles and 5000 cans... which includes everything from miller lite to rochefort 10....


of course, I also call my cellar the "beer store 2 blocks down the road where I can buy 99.9% of any beer that I care to drink within 10 minutes of the time I feel like drinking it"

so i guess in general, 1 "cellared" beer is 1 too many

 

I have more than I'd care to share. However, I have a few guidelines.

Don't age IPAs(excluding 120)
Do age bottle conditioned brews, big stouts and barleywines.

Some stuff falls through the cracks, but hey; nobody's perfect(except David Hasselhoff).

 

Um, so you're saying that most beers *do* age?

really?

 

There's a bit of a collector's mentality in me. I've found that it starts becoming a losing game when you are accumulating stuff at a way faster rate than you can consume it. I've made this mistake with other hobbies and have gotten a little better at avoiding it since becoming interested in beer. People interested in aging beer can have a cellar with a dozen bottles. People with 500 bottles are collecting. A cellar of that size no longer appeals to me, but more power to you if you truly enjoy it.

 

Nothing too crazy. 44 total beers i think. Some abyss, bigfoot, bcbs, boltcutter, dark lord. Nothing too crazy