new to aging/cellaring

I don't think there are many beers that actually improve with age, but here are a few I think do well with a few years on them.
Strong Trappist Ales: Rochefort 10, St Bernardus 12, La Trappe Quad, Orval
Gouden Carolus Cuvee Van De Kaiser Blue
Bells Expedition Stout
Bigfoot
DFH 120 min, WWS
Bourbon County Stout
BA Siberian Night (improved a lot in 1 year)

 

In my opinion beers that have strong alcohol forward or wood forward flavors from barrels and such will age well. I personally like how they mellow out a little bit on the alcohol burn and get a new dimension on the wood side.

I also age barleywines, sours, saisons, and a few other with wild characteristics.

Hell I even sit a few random beers to the side just for the fun of it to see what happens. It's an expensive hobby because I was taught long ago that you should always know how it tasted fresh,
So that forces me to buy 2 or more... My wife hates it haha

 

Perhaps pick up a Box of Bastard. It's a 4 pak of assorted bombers. Pretty sure all but the Lucky Bastard you can lay down. $22 for the box here.
Stone Russian Imperial Stout
Ten Fidy
Some Allagash
Yeti
Rum barrel aged Pumking
Barrel aged Narwhal
are a few not mentioned above I'm cellaring. I am also new to this

 

Stone Russian Imperial Stout holds up very well in the cellar for years. l've tasted Double Bastard aged 2 years, it was decent but better fresh. I personally wouldn't recommend Bastards for the cellar. I wouldn't stray too far from Belgians, sours and certain stouts and barlewines.

 

You could always do what I did when I first started.... If they come waxed, you can age them. Aka stay far away from my advice! That set me back wayyyy too much money in over priced releases!

 

I would recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/Vintage-Beer-...417981883&sr=8-1&keywords=Guide+to+aging+beer

Quick read that helped me a lot. Cliff notes are 8% ABV and up and their are certain styles of beer that handle age well. RIS,Barleywine, Strong Ales, Sours, and smoked/spiced beer

From experience BCBS and variants age well as does Stone RIS and Founders Imperial Stout. I would stay away from 5-10 year aging and focus more on 1-2. Drinking fresh before putting up is a great tip.

 

I'm a fan of aging beers that are on the easier side to get and creating verticals as well. My advice would be:

Bourbon County Stout
Brooklyn Black Chocolate
Bigfoot
Old Stock
Stone IRS

 

Brooklyn Chocolate and Bigfoot are both awesome with a few years on them

 

I've been aging beers for about 2 years and have tried a few things with mixed results. Here are a few things to try or think about.

Season imperial stouts are fun to play around with and build mini-verticals. You can pick them up at a relatively low cost every year and see if you like them better with age or fresh. Some I like after a year or two some I don't. The ones I do I start building a vertical of to see how they change. Ex: Expedition, Blackout, Yeti, FIS etc

My personal favorites to age are English Style old ales and barleywines. The imported ones (Fuller's Vintage, Yorkshire Stingo and J.W. Lees Barleywine) are easy to find vintages of so you can taste what the aged versions are like. I find I pick these up from time to time. The American versions of the styles (Old Curmudgeon, Third Coast Old Ale, Olde School, Really Old Brown Dog) are some of my favorite beers to age and are what I have the most of in my cellar.

I have yet to devote much cellar space to sours but that may come in the future.
Cheers!

 

Along those lines I have seen some wax bottled IPA's, which I wouldnt age.

 

believe me, I agree 100%

I was more making fun of my own mistakes when I first started aging certain beers. I wanted to tell him to avoid what I did at the beginning.

 

Oh I know I was just saying, believe me ive been in the same boat.

 

haha oh ok, wanted to make sure you didn't think I was a complete moron... well I was/am, but you know what I mean.

wax all the beers I say!

 

Generally speaking the beers that have the potential to age well are the bigger ones - stouts, Belgian (style) dubbels and quads (daisies and triples don't do it for me with time on them,) barley wines, old ales and the like - ones with higher alcohol content to begin with. Also generally aging well are sour styles, most especially those still on lees. Ones that don't are hoppy styles, and lighter beers.

 

My advice, just have fun and experiment. My cellar is just turning one so I'm at a point where I have 2-year verticals of beers like Parabola, Velvet Merkin, Black Tuesday, BCBS, BA Old Rasputin and Narwhal. I've benefited greatly and enjoyed year old bottles of White Oak, Abyss and Founders Imperial Stout.

Advice:

• Don't expect every beer to be magically better because you've held on to it for an extended period of time.
• Be prepared to be disappointed by this fact.
• Always buy in twos; one to enjoy fresh and one to cellar. That way you can tell how age affects the beer and whether it benefited from it or not. Taking notes helps with this.
• Temperature control! Be sure you're storing your beer properly and not letting it succumb to radical temperature swings. Use a fridge with a temperature controller or find the closet that's closest to the center of your house.
• I like to cellar beer that has a lot of fusel notes (harsh alcohol, or "heat"). Time tends to mellow it out.
• I love to cellar barleywine. Those "magical" properties that make cellared beer better; barleywines are the best at it / have the most-drastic changes, particularly American examples.
• If it's corked and caged, that usually means it's bottle conditioned and can be cellared. Anything bottle conditioned can stand some time.
• Have patience and willpower. A lot of it.
• Pay attention to labels. Some will explicitly tell you to when to consume a beer. BCBS has a 5 year max, Mephistopheles' Stout has 15. Most will benefit / peak with only a few. Beer ≠ Wine.

Don't blow your roll right off the bat. Start off with something easy. Sierra Nevada Narwhal and Bigfoot as well as Stone Old Guardian and RIS are great candidates to start a cellar and are relatively inexpensive and easy to find. Last year I bought only one bottle of Abyss to cellar. After a little more than a year I opened it and discovered I enjoyed it infinitely more with age on it than I did fresh. This year I'm going to try to buy two or three and age them longer than a year.

 

There are a few easy to acquire and relatively inexpensive beers that are well known as being able to improve with age. Many people spend lots of money and time tracking down "rare" beers and then let them sit in their "cellar" till they really are not as enjoyable as fresh. I would recommend starting the some of the well known beers and just totally avoiding the expensive/rare beers for aging. If you determine after a few years that you are someone who actually enjoys what age does to beer (many people spend thousands of dollars and fill their cellar with hundreds of rare bottles before they realize they don't really enjoy aged beer in the first place), then you could branch out into more risky territory. That way, if you find you don't like aged beers in general, you won't have wasted both good money and rare beer.

It has already been mentioned, but the book Vintage Beer by Patrick Dawson is without doubt one of the best resources out there. Buy 4 of each of the beers that he profiles in detail as being highly age-worthy (with 0-10 year vintage tasting notes in his book!!) and you will most likely be highly rewarded without buying into much of the aging beer hype that so often ruins beer that would have been better fresh.

I personally believe that there are a few beers that drastically truly improve with a few years of age, but this is the exception and not the rule, even with many high ABV stouts, barrel aged beers, and barleywines. Perhaps less than 0.5-1% of all beer improves significantly with age, and just like most of the wine sitting in people's basements and coolers, most of the beer currently being cellared is not getting significantly better and was designed by the highly skilled craftsmen to be consumed as fresh as possible after release.

 

Here is a new question: I have a lot of big beers right now (I know terrible problem to have), and they are in the cellar at the moment and I was wondering if I wasn't going to be able to drink them soon should I store them in the refridgerator or keep them in the cellar to "mellow out"? I'm talking Barrel-Aged Narwhal, Extremely Angry Beast, Hand & Seal, will these beers benefit from hanging out in the cellar for 3-6 months just to take the alcohol down a bit or should I stick them in the fridge and drink them ASAP. (PS I've never tried any of them before) I also have quite an extensive sour collection right now and was wondering if there was any benefit trying these beers fresh vs. the 3-6 month range, will the taste change noticeably?

 

How do you plan on cellaring your beers? In a box in your closet? climate controlled? spare fridge? Put a little effort into your storage space before you start buying beers and keeping them in your closet to "age" them.

You can put together a climate controlled cellar for a couple hundred bucks and give your self a better chance to have desirable outcomes. Sticking beer in your spare closet (what are spare closets amiright married guys zing ) is a great way to ruin a bunch of beer.