Proper Cantillon aging

Ask stupac, I dare you

 

In my cellar laying on it's side. I suppose you could also lay it on it's side in your cellar as well.

 

Muahaha.

I am of the opinion that it doesn't matter and you should do whatever you want.

(Right now mine are all upright because that's the most convenient way to store them. If I ever specifically build something to hold them I'd probably store them on their side because that gives you access to more bottles at once.)

 

Beer should be aged in an outer space cellar if you want to keep it from aging as fast as it would in a mere Earthly cellar.

 

http://beeradvocate.com/community/threads/cellaring-lambics-horizontally-vs-vertically.30744/

tl;dr

Cantillon is an amazing beer and if that amazement is diminished by standing upright vs. being vertical we here are not able to tell. And no one has done any long term scientific study.

 

Clearly I was drinking while I posted this, you know what I meant.

 

Diagonally...

 

Oh good, another one of these.

Short answer is cellar it horizontal or vertical. Just pick one and use it. It's not going to matter that much.

 

from the brewery itself

 

Barls, on the off chance that you took that photo, are all of the bottles labeled, or just that one? I always figured they were unlabeled until they are ready to ship.

 

Good thing I invested in an anti-gravity chamber, gravity really degrades your beer over time.

 

That explains all the dead fireflies clinging to the bottle you sent me.

 

This is, of course, how they store their bottles at Cantillon, there is, however, no evidence to suggest that they've tried it both ways and have come to the conclusion that this way is better, more like "this is the way we do it because this is the way we've always done it".

Also, think about this, how would you store that many bottles vertically? Perhaps they simply started storing them this way from the beginning due to space constraints and nothing more.

 

Serious question - has anyone had a vintage Cantillon and thought "This tastes like it was aged improperly" ?

 

Serious answer - Say the answer to your question is "no", what does that prove? It proves that either the way Cantillon does it better OR it makes no difference OR if it does make a difference people can't tell with just a single data point (in other words you'd need to do a blind side by side to notice the differnece).

Basically what I'm trying to say is, it proves nothing, it would be like saying "I drive a red car and it drives great, therefore red cars are better than blue cars".

 

That's what I've been saying for a while now. It seems really obvious to me that lambic brewers (and probably also wineries) started doing this for expediency's sake and then have kept doing it because it continues to be expedient. And because they're humans they rationalize that it's better this way.

(Although there is the "keeping the cork wet" business, it was never clear to me if sideways storage actually helps this, especially with beer.)

 

That's kinda my point (though I was legitimately asking as well)... 'loons are probably gonna be delicious no matter how they were aged. There seems to be a thread about how Cantillon beers should be stored every few weeks, and they almost always end with a split consensus.

 

Yup. It goes both ways on this vertical/horizontal thing/debate, and pretty much everything under the sun.

Been reading a great book: Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud by physics professor Robert L. Park.
"I came to realize that many people choose scientific beliefs the same way they choose to be Methodists, or Democrats, or Chicago Cubs fans. They judge science by how well it agrees with the way they want the world to be."

 

Well, sometimes. A good scientists trusts the data and allows it to convince them their beliefs are wrong (like that one Berkeley guy who independently ran the temperature data and found that it did indeed show warming). That doesn't always (or even often) happen, but I think that quote goes a bit too far. Although it looks like his book is talking about homeopathy, free energy, and UFOs, so I suppose in those areas it's pretty apt.