When Hot Knives first began reviewing beers, we bought new bottles quickly and often, mostly bombers on pocket change. The closest thing to “aging” those beers was the sloshing around they did on the bike ride home from the liquor store.
Then the small, but reliable, checks started coming in from the weekly beer column we call “Hip Hops,” which gets reprinted occasionally here and there. Beer money! As a result, the reviews have matured a bit — we splurge on less frequent shopping sprees and tote around geeky bound diaries to take notes — and with it, our holding policy has changed too. Nearly a year ago, we decided we wanted to try cellaring our beers, by saving certain bottles for a set period of time at (mostly) friendly temperatures. We got another push to do the project when our Internet friends at 1000 Beers embarked on their own ambitious mission of burning through unfamiliar craft brews one at a time. Now we’re upping the ante.
Thanks partly to those checks we have been able to amass a small but respectable collection, around 75 bottles that run the gamut from oily 13 percent ABV malt sludge to wild yeast Belgians. And few in the collection have been popped. Instead we have buried them dutifully in our basements and living room cabinets. The goal: Gather 99 bottles for aging and only begin popping them one at a time as we replace ‘em with something else.
Once we hit that 99-bottle mark, the next mission is to build, or buy, a proper 50-degree beer chamber. Until then, we have plans to house them in a wooden chest the size of a casket inside a walk-in fridge. To get ready for that we recently unearthed the bottles we’ve been storing. We took inventory and began drooling. Wanna see what we have aging? Take a peek at the video.
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Nice track selections!
VERY impressive selection. It will be interesting to discover which of those taste better aged than fresh off the line. Too bad that not all breweries put a date on the bottle as to when it was crafted, it’s hard to know how old a beer is sometimes :)
Love the site, thanks for sharing!
http://www.finearttv.tv
Great Project. Whenever I buy a few Quality Belgians for the sake of aging, the aging lasts no more than two days before I dig into my stash. I’ll bet a Gouden Caroulis tastes damn fine after aging for two years in a dark, cool place.
Where is the hip hops column published?
I can’t say I endorse the disclosure of your lock combo. Although it did fit in nicely with the Straight to Hell motif. Luckily you’ve got plenty of Stone gargoyles to ward off evil spirits and whatnot.
Rob,
Hip Hips runs in the Weekly Alibi from the land of my youth (Albuquerque, NM).
Thanks for all the comments dudes!
Nice collection, although you might want to try and find room to store them upright. I’ve had better luck, especially with the corked beers not having sideways.
i agree with the above comment that it was perhaps unwise to disclose your lock combination. i can’t believe i am this drunk at noon on a monday! cave beers are indeed delicious.
thanks dudes!
love,
your new next door neighbor.
p.s. great blog! dinner parties definitely in order.