Possibly a dumb question re: temperatures

According to Jean Van Roy, not a problem and may be a good thing, if anything:

http://www.beeradvocate.com/communi...le-50f-70f-summer-winter-cellar-temps.176478/

According to other "internet experts," if it fluctuates more than a degree you are screwed. I tend to go with that Jean guy (I guess he knows something about beer) but what do I know. Personally, I have my beer in my basement crawl space and I stuck a thermometer down there mostly for my own curiosity, and it gets to be about 55 in the winter, 70 in the summer, and I'm not worried a lick about the beers in there.

 

Beer is more resilient than a lot of people think. Patrick Dawson interviewed a few different cellar masters in his book, "Vintage Beer: A Taster's Guide to Brews That Improve Over Time," and posed the question to them. The biggest concern that the cellar masters had was, first, keeping the beer from being exposed to light. A lightstruck beer is a terrible skunky beer, so store them in the dark (preferably not just sitting on a shelf, box em up). The second problem cellar masters are concerned about is humidity levels. High humidity in your cellar can encourage molds and rust issues in your beer. This is very important to control especially if you have a lot of corked beers. Keep your cellars below 70% humidity by using a dehumidifier. The last issue they're concerned with is temperature stability. The more stable they can keep their temperatures, the slower the beers will transform themselves into malt vinegar. Wild swings of rapid warming and cooling will cause beers to degrade a lot quicker than stable temperature beers, even at warmer temperatures. The final issue was cool temps. Beer is best stored cool, not cold, at approx. 55f.. If you have problems with wild swings in temperatures, i've heard of people going to extreme measures to cellar beers. One such method involves digging a deep hole in your yard, inserting a desiccant pack or two into the box with your cellar beers and burying them in the deep dirt. The theory being that temperatures are a lot cooler and more stable from wild fluctuations buried six feet under in the soil.

Something you might want to ask yourself is, how long do I plan on cellaring my beers? Mr. Dawson advises again that most cellarable beers will hit a peak in maturity in flavor (much like wine) and then begin to fade out. In his book, he's tracked and tasted ten year flights of about fifteen (approx., if memory serves) beers. Some beers peak at 2-3 years (sours), some peak at 5 years (old ales, some Belgians, etc.) and some don't peak for 10 years (big barleywines, scotch ales, etc.). Even after they've peaked, the beers don't drop off immediately. Certainly, some sours and Belgians are perfectly fine with a lot of age on them. It's just the opinions of the author and his friends that helped him taste ten year flights trying to pinpoint how many years out that particular beer hits a peak. It's subjective like that but useful if you need a reference point for how long to cellar your beers if you have no clue (which most of us don't, myself included). Let's face it, many of the beers you and I are cellaring haven't even been around for more than five or ten years.

 

The cellaring book I just read (thanks to this board's recommendation) said that beer should be aged at less than fermentation temperature. For ales this is about 65 degrees. To me this makes sense - there are dormant yeast and other micro-flora in the beer that you want to stay shut off, then returning them to their active temperature range seems less than optimal.

With the forewarning that I'm coming from a wine background, the shorter the time to peak drinking for a given bottle the more volatile it is too environmental changes. So a 5 year to peak wine, for example, like a Cru Beaujolais from a vintage w/o much structure, is going to get funky if the temperature swings much away from 56 degrees. A vintage Port though you could fairly store alternately in the freezer and then an incinerator and it would be fine.

The question of how and what part of this dynamic applies to beer is interesting. Beer evolves really fast - so temperature stability and a relatively cold environment ought to be quite important. Then again most beers that are age-worthy have a a lot of stuffing (tannins and like anti-oxidant compounds) like the port wine, which lends to durability.

I'd say this regarding precise cellar conditions with a stable temperature in the 50's - it certainly can't hurt and might be of great benefit. As such if you can make that happen it's certainly not a bad idea.

Anecdotally, I've tasted probably around 1000 wines aged to various degrees. I notice a big difference between wines with good provenance and though without. Wines that come from auction websites, distributor or wine shop closeouts, people who don't have great storage can tend to be less than optimal (but certainly not always), some outright dreck. Wines with good provenance from good cellars almost always drink at their potential. One of the best wines I've had was a bottle from the cellar of Seattle wine related .com owner. The guys buys great wines straight from wineries; bottles go seamlessly into a perfect cellar. It was the first wines where I noted good storage as a discernible quality - could see how the wine might have gone down a bad path with harder environmental conditions and was able to appreciate how clean the window was looking into its depths.

Astute beer drinkers notice the same thing I'm sure. They cite flaws when they drink a 9-months-on-the-shelf at room temp bottle with expectations that it drink fresh. No reason to think this dynamic doesn't continue and grow as a factor as a beer ages longer. Again if you can optimal storage conditions certainly can't hurt - I'd move it to the fridge in summer, leave in the basement when that's steadily maybe 62 and under.

 

reread this and really I should never write anything longer than two sentences on a phone - what a mess the prose is! Sorry - I'm not even drunk (yet)