Tips on Aging Beer

Just make sure you don't have too much of a giant seasonal humidity/heat swing that affects the ares where you're storing your beer, and it'll be fine.

What I mean by that is that probably where you are in Ohio, you'll be able to just leave the beer in the basement and it'll be fine. Here in Kansas that isn't really the case because our humidity and heat swings are so extreme they actually affect the conditions in my basement. But that's really only the case out here on the high plains.

 

Just keep it dark and constant temp. Try to stay around 50-55. It will allow for enough warmth to keep the "bugs" working just enough, but cool enough not to make them over active.
Try not to move them around from a cold-warm-cold-warm.

 

I was gonna say something like, " always keep Greek Yogurt Stout on hand", but other than simply drinking up your stash, you have the right idea. My family is always digging into my stock.

 

In a nutshell, extremes of humidity can cause the seals to leak a bit, leading to oxidation. I might be slightly untechnical in my description and perhaps someone can correct me. So anyway, I would say just try to keep the humidity between 50 and 70 percent and you're OK.

 

Ya know, I'm not convinced on that. I can see corks drying out more quickly in low RH, and will personally vouch for mold creeping in on labels and cardboard at very high RH. But capped bottles create a mechanical seal, and neither the metal nor glass around the beer are likely candidates for being affected by moisture (barring possible aesthetic rust). If a "leak" were in some way created, temporarily or otherwise, the positive pressure of CO2 in the bottle would ensure no ambient air ingress until or unless the bottle went completely flat, which would indicate a more extreme packaging issue.

Oxidation is reactions with oxygen that is inevitably dissolved in solution at time of packaging, not from crap in your cellar that sneaks in.