Let's talk about this again... Sideways vs. Vertical with a minor twist.

Depends on what you intend for the beer. Allow the beer to develop and change more over a shorter period of time? Your cellar. Maintain as many of the beer's current characteristics as possible? Your fridge.

And that common knowledge doesn't necessarily apply to many of the cork/caged or cork/capped beers. Lots of debate there and pros/cons for each side of the discussion.

 

Can you lay the wine fridge on its back? Then you can keep your beer at 55 while also having the bottles vertical!

 

Maybe you are kidding, but if not...

Fridge's don't like to be anything but upright, both because the fluids move out of place (or drain out entirely) and because the compressor can get damaged depending on how it's positioned in the unit. Also I think most small fridges have their coils in the back and you wouldn't want to put weight on them.


Back to the vertical/horizontal debate: do any of your bottles have yeast or sediment in them? Because you'll want that to stay at the bottom. Also, some people say that when the bottle is vertical there's less surface area exposed to the air in the bottle thereby reducing the rate of oxidation, which I think is a valid point.


I've read about people modifying the shelving in their wine fridges to store beer upright. Take a look around the cellaring forum or on Google and I bet you can find something.

Good luck!

 

Not common knowledge... and I disagree with the underlying premise. Many (if not most) lambic brewers, blenders, and bars store lambic on its side. Not saying that makes it right, but it works for them, and works for me.

The more important factor is temperature.

 

could not agree more. and bottles on their side look so sexy

 

There is no evidence whatsoever that one orientation is better than any other. Do whichever is easier.

Temperature is many, many, many orders of magnitude more important than orientation.

 

Spoken like a man who doesn't own a gueuze basket.

 

Nope, never heard of such a thing before. But I don't have any lambics in my cellar and I never knew they are traditionally aged on their sides. Any idea why they are stored that way versus vertically?

 

I'm not particularly interested in getting into the never ending debate about aging, but I will say that beers (or wines) with sediment which are stored horizontally and poured from a basket pour considerably clearer than those stored vertically and then poured by hand, particularly if you're pouring into multiple glasses (or the same glass multiple times). Moving the bottle through a smaller range of angles means disturbing the sediment less.

 

I age my gueuzes/lambics on their side. Others I wouldn't position that way.

 

Makes sense. I learned something new!

 

Because it's easier. Look, here's a picture of Cantillon's aging room:


You can just go in and grab any one of those bottles. But if they're stacked in cases you can only get to the top, and even then you can't stack it all that high. It's just way easier to deal with large quantities of bottles when they're on their side. That's why I built myself sideways storage, I can get at any of my bottles in those racks without having to futz around with moving cases.

Now, of course, the lambic brewers claim that aging this way makes the beer better. I am skeptical of that, I think it's just that's the way it's been done forever so they post-hoc rationalize it as being better for taste. But it is absolutely, undeniably easier that way.

 

Storage temperature affects how a beer ages. The orientation of the bottle does not. I don't know if it's common knowledge or not, but it's the truth.

 

Well, it's good that you've settled that for us once and for all...

 

The real truth is that no one knows anything for certain - there have been very few actual experiments done on either temp or orientation. I know that a BA on here has 12+ years of Bigfoot that he has stored in a fridge and in his Nevada garage that apparently taste the same. I can't find it, but in one of these threads he was confident enough to bet someone their travel expenses to his March Madness party to prove it.

 

Damn straight. Still undefeated too. Although the beer was not stored in the garage. . . my garage gets over 110 degrees in summer (my profile don't say I'm from the hottest place in Northern Nevada just cuz it sounds cool, its bc its true!) and below 0 in the winter.

There's room temp, cellar temp and fridge temp stored Bigfoots. Nobody can discern them from one another when tasted blindly.