Cellaring

Posted by Jim on Nov 21st, 2013
2013
Nov 21

I’ve been cellaring beer for five years this month, and all that time, I’ve used one wooden cabinet with particle board shelves and a door and many cardboard boxes to store my collection. This was not an ideal way to view my beers. I had to consult a spreadsheet to see what I had. With our current long-term finishing of our basement, we’ve taken apart the partially completed room which included the aforementioned cabinet. This gave me the opportunity to finally purchase some decent shelving for my beers. Today I ordered a 5ft steel wireframe shelving unit from Home Depot. It only has two moveable shelves, so I also ordered an extra shelf to maximize storage space based upon the heights required by beer bottles. This should give me plenty of space to store my bottles. Some of my verticals may take up a lot of space; I’m not sure if I’ll display them or leave them in cases. This included six years of Anchor Christmas Ale 6-packs and five years of Sierra Nevada Bigfoot 12-packs (I’ll add a sixth year as soon as it comes out).

The shelves should arrive the first week of December. Once assembled and stocks, I’ll post some pictures. I’ll want to document it right away, for once my collection is sitting on the shelves, I’ll be more likely to drink it. How long will what I have now last? I wonder if this will be the beginning of a new chapter in my beer cellaring, or the beginning of its end? I’ll have to be good about adding new items to the collection as I drink my older bottles.