After "what's your favourite beer?" and "why aren't you fat?," probably the most common question people ask me about beer is how to cellar it. Whether it's the allure of the unconventional or the opportunity to explore a cachet normally associated only with whisky and wine, I don't know, but ageing beer is something that seems to genuinely fascinate a large number of people.
And so it should. Having just recently hosted a 'clean out the cellar' tasting in preparation for my upcoming move, I have fresh in my mind all the advantages of the patient ageing of certain beers. For example, among the many aged delights my friends and I sampled were an amazingly rich 1993 edition of Samichlaus, which offered an aroma far more complex than the younger vintage we sampled beside it, boasting notes of chocolate, coffee, molasses and something resembling intense cherry; a 1996 vintage Rogue Old Crustacean Barley Wine, which was decidedly full-bodied, bitter and balanced, and quite evidently could have take many more years of positive cellaring; and a spicy, slightly earthy EKU 28, which also could have laid in the cellar for numerous years to come.
Which is not to say that cellaring beer will necessarily yield delicious results. An ale with a few years behind it may be simply a mellower, more balanced version of its younger character, or it could be utterly transformed into something quite different from and more complex than its original self. It could also, it should be added, have turned to vinegar, but that's the chance you take with any alcoholic beverage in the cellar, even a first growth Bordeaux from a banner year.
If you have been itching to start a beer cellar of your own, here are a few hints to follow:
- Unlike wine, beer bottles should be stored standing up, regardless of whether they are finished with a cork or cap. (This is a bit of a hot-button topic, and certainly there will be those who disagree with me and insist that cork-finished bottles should be laid on their side, but my experience has proven the 'standing up' rule to be best for beer over the long term.)
- Cellared beer should be treated the same way one would handle laid-down wine. Keep the beer in a cool, 10º to 15º C (55º to 60º F) environment, and away from direct light, temperature variations and harsh odours. If you must move a beer once it has been placed in the cellar, do so gently and try not to disturb the yeast if it is present.
- Do not cellar your beer in a refrigerator. The ageing of alcoholic beverages is a form of controlled degradation, which will be severely slowed if said beverage is stored in a very cold environment.
- Try to cellar young vintages rather that older ones so that you might have as much control as possible over their destinies. If you can, lay down at least a dozen bottles of each beer you choose to cellar so that you may check their progress over the years.
- When choosing beers for the cellar, look for ones with high strength, higher-than-average hopping rates and yeast in the bottle. There are exceptions to each of these rules -- many gueuzes of moderate alcohol content, for example, will age spectacularly -- but until you familiarize yourself with the kinds of beers that will age well, these are helpful generalizations to make.
- And finally, when you feel that a beer has hit aged perfection, enjoy your stock, but keep one or two behind just in case it gets even better a year or two down the road.
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