question about "cellaring" IPAs

As cold as you can go without freezing is probably your best bet. There was another thread asking if you could freeze IPAs and thaw them out in the future as a way to preserve the fresher hop characteristics but the comments were inconclusive. I'm not sure what if any cellular changes occur in beer once it has been frozen.

Sounds like you've got a few bottles so you could try freezing one or two and stick the rest in your fridge. Open one of each up in the summer and at the end of the year and note the differences. And next year, just buy fewer bottles.

Despite what you might read a refrigerated Hopslam won't become a "malty mess" or a barleywine anytime this year!

 

I have saved several bottles of Hopslam in each of the past few years, due to purchasing too much or "burn out" and I actually like it quite a bit with some age (6-10 months) on it. The hops die off pretty quickly and the honey comes through quite a bit more. But to each his own I guess, good luck!

 

I would drink them ASAP. Hopslam has a lot of late additions and is already falling off imo.

I'm pretty sure that honey is 100% fermentable and as such does not provide residual sweetness. Cheers!

 

I believe he was referring to the sweetness coming across as a honey flavour, not actual honey - I too find that big IPA's often develop a lot of honey sweetness as they get a little older. 10 month old Palate Wrecker was my recent experience like this.

Like others say, cold as possible to try to slow down the breakdown of those delicate acids. Freezing can cause havoc on the chemistry with the phase change of its base so I'd think that's best avoided (beyond the obvious explosion concerns)

 

Since I've brought up or asked about freezing a few times on BA and gotten no responses, I might have to be the one to do the experiment.

 

That sounds like overkill.

 

Here's what Dave Radzanowski of the Siebel Institute said about freezing beer, in a Lew Bryson article about beer abuse, How Does a Good Beer Go Bad:

 

Winner!

 

Seriously. Far too much work. It's beer.

 

Have a rotation of beers? Like Hopslam one day, a stout the next, a wheat beer the next, and then back to Hopslam. I just say this because it sounded like you were drinking Hopslam every day.

 

First world problems!

Put it on the bottom shelf of the fridge (the coldest shelf) and you're good