It’s a new year and might be a good time for you to rewrite your beer game. Much like wine and liquor, beer can benefit from aging. Your standard 12 oz. of Newcastle or Corona will not hold up for more than a few months, but those tasty Tripels, Barleywines, and any barrel aged brew will only get better with time. Now’s the time to start your beer cellar!

It takes a great deal of discipline to store one or two extra bombers of the year’s hottest releases, but it is quite the experience to see how a beer can evolve over the span of 12 months. Much of the boozy and bitter hop tastes tend to mellow out while the malt takes over and can expand the specific flavors of the beer.

Start Your Beer Cellar This New Year

Getting started may be a bit of expenditure, but being in possession of a wealth of popular beer that has the possibility of transforming into the top bomber of next year is an exciting journey. While the idea of making this beer treasure trove can be exciting, there are a few important steps you will need to take in order to get the most out of your cellared brews.

Storing Your Beer

Once you have a good amount of beer set aside, you will need to set yourself some ground rules in terms of how you store it. Always keep your beer upright, out of sunlight and at a constant/cool temperature. Many enthusiasts make their own cupboards or chests to place their precious bottles into, but a regular cardboard wine or beer box will suffice. Designating some closet space or an extra room downstairs is also a good idea so that guests or family members do not prematurely open up one of your keepers.

There is no set amount of each beer that you should hold onto, but depending on how well you enjoy it and how well it holds up are the only real considerations to take. Once you are a few years into starting your beer reserve, your year-by-year vertical stacks of each delicious beer will prove to be a treasured and evolving stockpile that you will be able to pull from for any special occasion.

When Do I Open Them?

The great thing about storing beer is that it is all an experiment to find the prime time to open each individual label. Goose Island’s Bourbon County “Brand Stout,” for example, is an extremely popular beer that has been extensively communicated across the country as being at its best two to three years after its bottling.

Having a rough idea of when you should open your secretly stashed brews can also give you a good estimate of how many to purchase as well. Using stickers or tags to mark each bottle with a “drink by” date is the best option to keep your entire inventory accounted for and marked for an optimal drinkability date.

If you know one is best at two years, you may decide to purchase four of the same year so that you can have one once you get home, another a year later and then two to open and share with friends once it is the most enjoyable. What are you waiting for? Start your beer cellar today!