How much is too much?

You don't have to spend a ton to start building out some verticals. The following beers are available regularly and aren't wallet breakers:

North Coast Old Stock & Rasputin
Hair of the Dog Adam
Anchor Old Foghorn
Stone IRS & Old Guardian
Bells Expedition & Third Coast Old Ale
Brooklyn Black Chocolate & Monster
DFH Olde School & Palo Santo
Founders Imperial
Sierra Nevada Bigfoot
Thirsty Dog Siberian Night
Victory Old Horizontal
Weyerbacher Old Heathen, Heresy & Insanity

If they are not local to you, they are very easy to trade for the latest vintage. Then it's just a matter of patience.

 

I'm at around 150, and I have too many. Trading is what brought me up to a level that I don't think is realistic for me. Trades began naturally expanding from 4 beers to 12 and my favorite styles (like bwine and stouts) are ones that I don't want to drink every day. Also, my love of hops pushed the number up because I just couldn't bring myself to only go with the cellar styles.

Sure I have some base level where I'm aging ones as an experiment or ones I know I love with age. Plus, I like keeping around some "drinkable" stuff that I don't need to age but it's a one-off, seasonal, or just hard to find. This includes some sours now that I'm into those. I think the number for me that feels right will be about 75.

 

I like your choices. Just moved from Minnesota to Wisconsin so it's been really rough not having immediate access to Great Divide (I know, first world problems). You have a great list for starting a good cellar.

 

I just crossed the 300 bottle mark. I'm building a bunch of verticals with enough bottles to pop one every year or so just to see where it's at. Like others, almost everything that's in the cellar gets shared. Sure, I do most of the heavy lifting, but I've always got friends who chip in on a trade or slide a bottle my way to get something accomplished and as a result, my cellar is for them as well.

It never feels like too much. If a beer goes bad, at least I'm sharing it and will remember the experience of sharing such an awful mistake with a friend.

With that said, if the cellar ever reaches the 500 bottle limit, I might back off a bit and drink down some excess stock. The ultimate goal is to experiment for a good 10 years and figure out what I really want to keep around for the long term.

Beer is fun and meant to be shared. That's the bottom line. I keep a cellar so I'll always have something interesting to share. How can you limit that?

 

I began completely by accident, I just wanted a taste of everything and was buying more than I could drink, so I had extras. Then once I made room in my basement I found I could really store away whatever I had or later bought. Some weeks I'll spend $50 on beer, some weeks it's $500. I've made a few trips out of town to buy stuff I can't get here, and I've begun trading to get in more hard to get stuff. I do drink a bottle or two most nights, and I try to rotate out what I have but some stuff sits because I want it to age, others because they're for special occasions. I'll admit I rarely share anything in my cellar, the few tastings I've hosted haven't gone the way I'd hoped and some people don't ever reciprocate when they host a tasting of their own, so I don't feel I should share what I've paid for with my hard earned money. I always said I'd stop at 500, but I'm just over that now and still have a long list of stuff I want. Plus it's fun to experiment with aging and to try beers as they get older.