It’s On Tap

Cellaring has been a practice in the wine industry for years, but the concept of aging has just recently made its way into the beer community. I heard about cellaring beer last month, did a little reading, and decided to give it a shot myself. I mean really, how much is there to know?

The Concept
Aging wine allows it to gain complexity and flavor, among other nuances. It began in caves beneath vineyards and wineries, moved into restaurants and wine bars, and has developed into quite the hobby for your average wine enthusiast (not to mention a point of pride for a lot of wine snobs). As the beer industry and its endless list of microbreweries have striven for experimentation, it was only a matter of time until someone tried cellaring beer, undoubtedly hoping for the same results.

There are many businesses and breweries in Portland who do this currently, and hold public tastings periodically around town. I haven’t personally tasted any aged beer, but I have read about people who have and most have said that there are actually distinct and positive changes.

The key to any wine cellar is managing three major factors: temperature, light, and humidity. With beer, the same basic rules apply. Wine ages best when it’s kept at a moderate temperature (about 55°F) in a dark environment. Beer should be treated the same way, but preferably at lower temperatures (below 50°F). The humidity aspect refers to keeping the cork in the wine bottle in constant contact with wine so it doesn’t dry out, shrink, and let air in. With beer caps you really don’t have to worry about that, but corked beer should be stored at an angle for this purpose.

Lastly, the alcohol content of the beer is important too. The higher the alcohol content (aka closer to wine strength), the better it will age. And because beer is much more active than wine in terms of in-bottle fermentation (that’s the yeast, baby), beer ages best between 6 months - 2 years, where as wine is seemingly limitless.

My Cellar
After hearing about cellaring beer, I started looking around for some good candidates, and came up with 5 beers to start my personal cellar.

• Deschutes Brewery’s The Abyss - Imperial Stout - 11%
• Unibroue Brewery’s La Fin du Monde - Strong Triple-Style Golden Ale - 9%
• Rogue Brewery’s Imperial Stout - Imperial Stout - 11%
• Rogue Brewery’s Old Crustacean - Barleywine - 11.3%
• Bridgeport Brewery’s Old Knucklehead - Barleywine - 10%

Five strong cellar players in my opinion. The Rogue beers are in ceramic bottles as well, making them especially good candidates for aging and, eventually, tasting, which brings me to the whole point of this process.

Tasting
These 5 beers were all cellared around the same time: mid-January. I plan to take them out and drink them at different times, but I’m not sure which I’ll start with. I think I’ll wait 3 months before tasting one, then one a few months later, and so on. I’m going to try to round up a fresh bottle of the beer I have cellared around the time I plan to taste it so I can compare the two.

I’ll throw up some thoughts when I break one out to taste, and hopefully one or two of the other guys can come over and taste them too so we can have a couple different opinions. Until then, is anyone else doing this, and if so, what beers are in your cellar?