Vinotemp Cellar and Sideways Beer

Beers with cork and cages will be fine but the yeast will gather on the side of the bottle and you will want to refrigerate any bottle you store in there upright for at least 24 hrs before consumption to allow the yeast to settle.
Beers with metal caps could rust depending on the quality of cap used. Many smaller breweries use low budget caps which will rust over an extended periods of time.
So overall I would not recommend long term beer bottle storage horizontally.

 

This is wrong. You can just keep the bottle sideways. This is why lambic baskets exist, and doing it is really not that hard.

When was the last time you saw a cap that didn't have a plastic (I believe PVC) liner on the inside? Not in this century, I'd guess. I've had a good number of older capped beers and never seen rust. I'm not saying it won't happen, but that the odds are low enough to not worry about, and if it does happen it probably means the cap failed and the beer would be bad regardless of orientation.

Based on reasoning that flimsy? Okay.

OP, it'll be fine. No one has ever demonstrated using anything even approaching scientific experiment/reasoning that aging one way is better than the other (or, if they have, the evidence is unavailable, like that champagne study). Do whatever you want and it'll be fine.

 

I have seen this happen when the bottle is capped but the brewer puts foil over the neck of the bottle. The outside part of the cap gets rusty from what I assume is moisture from a process on the bottling line that is prevented from evaporating well due to the covering on the neck.

 

Oh yeah, I've heard of that but never actually seen it (older foil-covered beers aren't super common). I don't think that would affect the beer at all, though.

Yeah, it looks like a great box. It looks like if you got clever you could put some additional storage above the racks, near the compressor. I'm a bit jealous, getting something with that capacity for only $300 is a steal, I've seen those on craigslist but only for well over $500.

 

Yeah, that article was pretty good, but as far as I can tell that guy, like me, is just a scientifically minded person trying their best, not an expert in the field. And those papers are typically dealing with aging ALLs, not good beer. I asked The Beer Chemist (who runs a blog) if he knew of anything at all dealing with aging sideways vs upright, and he said he didn't but couldn't really see why one would be preferable.

In the end I come down heavily on the side of "do whichever's easier", which is why I now have about 1/3 of my bottles sideways and 2/3 upright, that's how it makes sense given what I have. (Also finding bottles is SO MUCH EASIER when they're on their side, rather than stacked in boxes.)

 

If I were you I'd add some kind of shelving above where the racks end, looks like you could get another few cases in there.

Also, I just realized that it holds bottles 2-deep. And if I counted right is 9x18x2, for over 300 bottles stored as-is! You can't even find wooden racks for $1/bottle, and you managed to find a FRIDGE for that? I don't think I can overemphasize how thoroughly you scored with this thing.

 

Stupac already hit it, but I'll reiterate. Vertical/Horizontal storage is near the bottom of the list of concerns when storing beer. Environmental factors like light, heat and moisture content are all far more important. If water drips on the bottles, caps could rust (I've seen this happen.) Mold/mildew is a bit of an environmental factor too, if you're aging for a long time.

For you, throw the bottles in there and call it a day.

Awesome, awesome score on that unit. Well done.