Monday, October 7, 2013

Question: How Do I Cellar (Age) Bottles at Home?

Question #1: How can I cellar (age) bottles at home?

September 27, 2013 at 1:37pm
This is a great question! I've been cellaring for over 5 years, and the rewards are endless - if you have the patience!
 
Location
Find a dark area of your residence, with no exposure to light (a basement corner, a closet, etc) that maintains a -constant temperature-. Preferably a little cooler. Both points here are very important, don't compromise! Your beer will thank you years from now.

You don't need anything special, just a place to keep them. Some people build a beer rack, but I just use Boxes on the ground. Keep your bottles upright, not on their sides, as they need to sit on that yeast cake.

What can I age?
 You can age bottle conditioned and non-bottle conditioned ales, but I suggest sticking to BC. The yeast cake helps the beer stay healthy and age maturely, as it is still interacting with the yeast on which it was made. Force carbed brews also age well, but you are limited to the lifespan of the carbonation, and you have to choose carefully at what point you want to open the bottle before the carbonation expires. (Some cellar gurus turn to waxing the tops of their force-carbed bottles to combat this during aging)

I suggest taking a permanent marker and marking the caps of your bottles with the month and year (9/13). Or you can make a small tag with some twine and hang it around the bottle's neck. This is especially helpful a few years down the line, when you find a tasty, dusty bottle and can't remember for the life of you how old it is! Start the practice now, you'll thank yourself later.

Put those bottles away and forget about them!

The Beer Pull
Put your cellar in a place that is -difficult- to get to, or a place you don't think about often. This helps the fight the 'beer pull' - that desire to crack open that bottle. There's nothing worse than, after having a few too many, cracking open that beautiful aged beer in the basement - only to wake up the next morning to discover the second half of the bottle never got drank. (shudders) ..Guilty.

Temperature
Only chill your bottles when you're ready to consume them. Purchase your bottles to be aged warm (not out of the cooler) and put them in your cellar. When you're finally ready to dip into your cellar, put your bottle in the fridge to chill it, and then serve. Large and drastic temeperature changes are -not- your friend. Do everything you can to help those bottles maintain a constant temperature. If you buy a bottle for aging out of a cooler, find a way to allow that temperature to slowly lower. Wrap it in a towel or blankets, or something similair (you'll find a way), and allow the bottle to come to room temperature gradually, then place in your cellar.


Vertical Tasting
This is one of my favorite aspects of beer, and one of the best tasting experiences I think you can have.

A Vertical Tasting is when you sit down with multiple years of a given brand. I've fortunately been able to take part in three or four, and they've all been mind-opening experiences. A four year vertical tasting of Founders KBS next year would look like this: 11', 12', 13', 14' (fresh batch). Start your group with the fresh batch (current year) and work your way backwards.

The alternative option would be to start with the oldest first and work your way forwards. This method is usually enacted in an effort to allow your palate to be freshest for the oldest bottle. There's no 'wrong' way, but there's two great options for setting up your own tasting. Verticals provide a truly unique opportunity to taste multiple years of aging side-by-side, allowing you and your group to explore the subtle differences between the years.

You can easily start collecting for your own vertical tastings, years from now, but simply grabbing a 4 pack of a given brand that interests you, once a year. I usually drink one fresh, and then age the other three. I'm currently doing this with Sierra Nevada Bigfoot, North Coast Old Rasputin, and some others. When you have a chance, at some point in the year, grab a four pack and stash it away.

For special releases, like KBS, I try to obtain two four packs per year. Drink one, age the other 7. With this practice, you can easily have yourself in the range of a 3 or 4 year vertical without even thinking about it.

How long can you age?
This is a big question that has many, many different answers. You ask a different person, you'll get a different answer. There's alot of different factors that influence the aging life of a bottle, but that's a huge discussion that I'm not going to get into here.My aging rule is right around 5 years. I think the longest I would, personally, push my bottles is to 7 years. With all the different factors, I start thinking it's about time to open that bottle by around 5 years. Whenever you choose to open it, it's great, I'm just talking about the extreme end. There are people that say 10 years, some 12, and that's just fine - but for me, I start worrying around 5 years. I don't want that beer to go too far and miss out on the delisciousness within!

I've had a great amount of success with 3 years. Especially in the vertical tastings, for my own palate, three years is right around perfect. KBS aged at 3 years is the best I've ever had it, and possibly one of the best beers I've ever had. Same went for Stone Russian Imperial. Mmm.. three years..

So what does aging do?
Aging allows the beer to mellow and the flavors to coalesce. Some beers, especially big beers, present themselves as "layered", as I call it. All of these intense flavors that stand out from eachother, layered. Aging allows all of those extreme layers to meld with eachother, tighten, and mellow into a spectacular presentation of flavor and complexity. It's absolutely worth it - if you have the patience.

Generally, the kinds of beer you want to age are the bigger and bolder styles. Barleywine, Wheatwine, Imperial Stout, Old Ale, Stock Ale - beers along those lines. Even the standard styles do well with a little time, especially the heavier ones.

Some styles simply don't lend themselves to aging. Some beers are simply meant to be drank. These styles include pislner, most other styles of lager, oktoberfest, pale ale, cream ale, etc.

Hoppy Beers are not meant to be aged. Aging does not treat hops well - you start to see the hop flavor diminish first, the tones starting to dull and weaken, to (on the extreme end, after years) practically no hop flavor at all. The bitterness is retained, but eventually, it, too will start to decline. I wouldn't suggest aging an overly hoppy beer (like an IPA or DIPA) for more than a year.

Personally, my cellar is tied to some of the best beer experiences I've ever had - I encourage you all to invest the time in it - your beer-loving brain will love you for it.

Cheers!
BD

A Sidenote

Hello beer-loving friends,
I haven't been the best at keeping this thing updated, so I'm going to do my best to keep up with it!

Monday, January 14, 2013

Watch For Imposters! Macro in Micro Clothing.



Incomplete list of Faux Craft Beers on the market:

Shock Top (Anheuser-Busch Inbev)
Blue Moon (Molson Coors)
Harvest Moon (Molson Coors)
Ganville Island Brewing Company (Molson Coors)
Stone Mill Pale Ale (Anheuser-Busch Inbev)
Jack's Pumpkin Spice Ale (Anheuser-Busch Inbev)
Winter's Bourbon Cask Ale (Anheuser-Busch Inbev)
Sun Dog Amber Wheat (Anheuser-Busch Inbev)
Beach Bum Blonde Ale (Anheuser-Busch Inbev)
Alexander Keith’s (Anheuser-Busch Inbev)
Landshark Lager (Anheuser-Busch Inbev)
Margaritaville Brewing Co (Anheuser-Busch Inbev)
Redbridge (Anheuser-Busch Inbev)
Wild Blue (Anheuser-Busch Inbev)
Wild Red (Anheuser-Busch Inbev)
ZiegenBock (Anheuser-Busch Inbev)
Kokanee (Anheuser-Busch Inbev)
Hurricane Malt Liquor (Anheuser-Busch Inbev)



Thursday, January 10, 2013

Oversaturation and YOU!






Oversaturation (n., adj.): The excessive flooding of a market with a commodity that consumers can purchase








People all over the nation have been tossing around the word "oversaturation" for a couple years now. Mind you, West Michigan does maintain a great market, we've seen our own slew of new breweries over the last two years: Vivant, Harmony, Mitten, Perrin, 57 Bistro and Grille, Sunset Boulevard, White Flame, Pike 51 and Rockford BCs have all opened their doors.

Oversaturation

This topic is referring to our current explosion of microbreweries in the US. We are getting to the point that there are so many that it may not be beneficial for the culture. This aspect effects the user (aka you), and also effects the producers and distributors (aka them).

Us and Them

As far as the producers go (especially those planning to open soon), oversaturation is a frustrating topic. Existing and soon-to-be-existing breweries are getting more frustrated with our ever-growing situtation, because it all comes down to, you guessed it - money. It comes down to customers and customer flow. Brewery owners are getting pinched because they are simply one brewery of twenty in a given area, and just can't pull in the business.

We have a bit of a unique situation locally here in Grand Rapids because we appear to have a bottomless beer culture. You open it, we'll drink it! Point and case goes to Grand Rapids BC, who just opened in early December (the second to last projected open for Grand Rapids). They were at capacity for fourteen days, and the public drank them down to around two taps for the entirety of that time.

Let's use Elk Brewing as a hyper-local example. They are slated as the last proposed microbrewery in the City of Grand Rapids. It's taken them a while to get the doors open (having taken over a year and a half and have yet to release an opening date), but reports indicate that they are brewing up a storm behind those closed doors.

Can you imagine the pressure? They are opening into a retail market that is full of breweries, world class beers, (now) loved and cherished local joints, how are they supposed to compete, especially with so many breweries with an already established local pull?

(Obviously, I'm playing the Devil's Advocate here, I know they will be open and be absolutely smashed busy, as is the Grand Rapids custom, but the point still stands.)

The other aspect of "THEM" problems include retail space. How is a new brewery possibly supposed to find shelf space amongst a plethora of international, national, regional, and local brands (especially when the beer layout of mostly every national and regional retailer is designated by AB/inbev)? How are distributors supposed to push their product when that product is only one of forty breweries represented by them, and they are one of eight distributors in the area?

You can see where this starts to get messy. But the answer is a unique one: it's us.

US

This problem takes on a much more personal note with the individual beer lover.

Oversaturation means an inevitable decline in quality.

If there were five great breweries in the city five years ago, and five years from now this city boasts over 50 breweries, how many of them do you think will be making good beer?

Every homebrewer that has picked up a paddle has said to their friend, "all I want is to open a microbrewery," and now it's easier than ever, and people are actually doing it.

The national markets are showing that Microbreweries are where a decent chunk of entertainment revenue is coming from, our national tastes are shifting, and everyone wants their own brewery. However, everyone who wants to open a brewery, doesn't mean that they should.

This is where WE come in.

It's our job as beer lovers and people who care about our industry to be honest and open with our brewers, to not be afraid of hurting feelings and openly share your actual opinion. If it's a brewer that really cares about their beer, they will respect you for sharing your opinion and (hopefully) take it to heart.

No one wants to see their beer degrade, nothing is better in the brewing industry than actually speaking your mind.

As we go forward into our oversaturated market, don't forget to share your opinion and stand up for good beer - it deserves to be stood up for!

Remember this in the years to come, as breweries come and go, open and close, undoubtedly we will see many more open than close. That's the other thing, in a very saturated market, especially one as critical as Grand Rapids, if you don't open a good brewery, you won't stay open. Make it or break it.

Just don't forget, it's US. Our voice. The buyers. We decide what we want to succeed in our city with what we pay for.

I could go on and on about this topic, but I think I'll save it for a future post.

Thanks for reading,
Cheers and cheers,
Ben