My love for you is well-documented. When you first arrived, you finally answered the question: “Why do I tick so many beers?” The answer: to find a beer like you. Since your creation, I’ve drank my weight in the stuff, possibly many times over. Yellow Rose, you have been my menu beer (a beer to drink while perusing the menu), my go-to beer whenever I’m at a place that has you on tap, and a serious vexation to me whenever I’m at a place that doesn’t. I have chosen where to eat based on your availability. I am obsessed.

But then I moved, Yellow Rose, away from the lovely home we call Texas, to a place far away and, sadly devoid of your incredible elixir: Brooklyn. And as a beer drinker, I found that Brooklyn is no desert, with myriads of amazing beer, including the occasional mosaic-hopped beverage to attempt to quench my thirst. But you have no substitute; you are a beer that stands alone. So I resorted to doing what any obsessed fan would do: import bottles.

When I’m in Houston, as I am this week, I drink you, Yellow Rose, as often as possible. And then I export bottles back with me to NY in my checked baggage. When I’m not in Houston, I have friends pick up and ship bottles to me. This has gone on for long enough that I feel it’s time that you and I had a chat.

You know I love you, Yellow Rose. You know we’ve had some great times together. I can picture the Valentine’s Day “Bae” snapchat I sent my friends with only a picture of a pint of you. I can still recall my glee when you won the first inaugural Houston Beer Bracket. You know I love you, Yellow Rose. But we need to talk.

See, while you’re amazing on tap, there’s a problem with your bottles: I never know your age. Am I drinking you only a few days out of the bright tank, or a few months after your delivery to a store that doesn’t move product fast enough? Other beers, they are forthcoming with their age, but you, you hide it, with no bottle dates to be seen! It’s disheartening, and it makes me feel like you don’t trust me, to tell me the truth of your age.

I know that Aaliyah taught us that “age ain’t nothing but a number,” but in this case, I feel like that doesn’t apply. In this case, age ain’t nothing but an indication of how fresh your mosaic goodness is. And that indication is important.

So, Yellow Rose, we might need to take a break. It pains me to say it, but I don’t think I can drink from the bottle any longer until you have a bottle date. What I’m trying to say is, perhaps we need to see other people/beers when I’m not in town.

Love,
Nathan

p.s. What’s that? You say that Lone Pint just got a new bottling line for 500ml bottles and that they’ll soon be bottle dating you going forward? Incredible news, Yellow Rose! Disregard all the stuff above, I would never reject you! Welcome, Yellow Rose, to the world of bottle dates!

The post I love you, Yellow Rose, but we need to talk [Lone Pint to bottle date Yellow Rose!] first appeared on Houston Beer Guide.

The post I love you, Yellow Rose, but we need to talk [Lone Pint to bottle date Yellow Rose!] appeared first on Houston Beer Guide.

• Take inventory of your cellar. This is far and away the most important thing you can do. It may be daunting, but if you don’t know what you’ve got, then you have no idea what’s wasting away. Most importantly, you’ll have no idea what can be salvaged. Make a spreadsheet. Embrace your inner nerd.
• Prioritize. A vintage Real Ale Sisyphus might have peaked, but it probably won’t fall too far too fast; save it. That Stone Imperial Russian Stout vertical? Now’s the time to move it to the fridge. Stone IRS ages gracefully, but it doesn’t get too much better, either, and the downside of a still-decent-but-past-its-prime bottle is not worth the risk. Oh, and that last sixer of Saint Arnold Divine Reserve 8? Yikes. May as well move it to the fridge, too.
• Be ruthless. Understand that every single beer in your cellar is a sunk cost. Just because you spent money and time on buying/aging it doesn’t mean you should be attached to it. When you open that aforementioned DR8, it’s very likely to suck. It’s a 6.5-year-old Scotch Ale, after all. You’ll smell the oxidation as soon as you start pouring it. Give it a sip or two, just to be sure, and then pour it out. It’s not your fault. (It is, but I’m trying to be helpful.)
• Host a Clear the Cellar party. Whether it’s at home or at a bottle-share-friendly bar (ask in advance!), get 8 or 12 or 15 people together and get to work. You can easily clear a couple dozen bottles or more this way. It’s a good time to tackle some verticals, or to finally pop that 17% monster that you’re afraid to look at when you’re alone. Oh, and make it very clear to all your guests that it’s not a regular bottle share. Don’t let anyone bring their own bottles, as that would defeat the purpose. If everyone tries to clear their cellar at the same party, nobody clears a thing.

• Finally, and most obviously, stop buying so much beer! (As an aside, my friend and fellow HBG writer Jeff Fountain’s 3FIT rule fits perfectly here. You can’t drink every new beer.) More specifically, don’t buy multiples of anything, except for maybe your all-time favorites and/or tried-and-true aging beers (which we covered in the last post). The days of limited selection on local shelves and being able to buy two of everything just to experiment are long gone. Yes, that brand new bourbon-barrel-aged imperial stout will probably hold up for a couple years, but do you really need to take the risk with a second bottle? No.

The post #DrinkNow: attack your cellar first appeared on Houston Beer Guide.

The post #DrinkNow: attack your cellar appeared first on Houston Beer Guide.

This post is about the exceptions to the #DrinkNow rule. First things first: If you don’t know the basics for aging beer, go check out this interview with Adam Avery (yes, that Avery). It covers all the most important points, and will serve as a great launching pad.

The post #DrinkNow: the exceptions to the rule first appeared on Houston Beer Guide.

The post #DrinkNow: the exceptions to the rule appeared first on Houston Beer Guide.

Don’t feel too bad; it’s not (entirely) your fault. But if you’re anything like most craft drinkers I know — and you’re reading this site, so you probably are — then you’re currently the proud owner of beer that is way past its prime. That thought kinda sucks, right? Well it’s not nearly as bad as opening that special bottle you’ve been saving for just the right occasion, only to take your first sniff and…BAM! Wet cardboard.

Don’t let that happen to you. If it has happened to you, don’t let it happen again. Welcome to #DrinkNow.

#DrinkNow means drinking fresh. It means drinking a beer soon after you buy it, when it’s at its (probable) peak, as the brewer intended. It means no longer aging beer.

Now, sure, there are some caveats/exceptions to #DrinkNow. I’ll get into those in a later post. For now, why #DrinkNow?

It took me a while to get here. I started aging beer essentially by default. I bought more than I could drink, and instead of slowing down the purchases, I put them in a cardboard box. That was 2008. The box turned into four by 2010. By then I was buying to age on purpose. (Remember those heady days when Houston shelves were so sparse that you could realistically buy two of every new beer, one to drink and one to age?) A couple of years later came a cabinet, and then a year later, a dedicated beer fridge. By early 2014, I had somewhere around 175 bottles aging in the fridge and the cabinet (and a couple more boxes).

Then we had the twins. Weekly trips to the store became a monthly trip, at best. Beers after work and nights out became something else entirely. If I wanted to drink beer, it had to be at home. So I went into the cellar. Some beers were still pretty good. Others had aged “interestingly”. And a select few were complete disasters — oxidized beyond belief, with no hint of the original beer left.

The tipping point came in August of 2014. To help navigate my cellar, I set up “theme weeks” (nerd alert!), with verticals, horizontals or stylistic threads. One of those was a Brett Week. Clearly a series of world-class Brett beers would’ve aged well, right? Not quite. A 2012 Green Flash Rayon Vert was really good, and a 2012 Boulevard Saison-Brett was in a bit of a sweet spot. But a 2011 Saison-Brett was weird and boozy. Worst of all, a 2011 Orval was a completely oxidized disaster. No Brett, no bite or brightness or anything resembling my favorite beer — just limp, wet cardboard.

I wasn’t quite done with aging beer. I told myself I’d stop aging Saison-Brett, and that I would be more selective. There were some hits, too — a 2011 Jester King Black Metal (OG/English Ale yeast version) was spectacular. But for every hit there were multiple misses. I’m still upset at that accidentally aged The Bruery Melange 8. Fresh, it was a spectacular coffee/bourbon blend; two years later, it had turned into a watery, ashy mess. Other misses were rarely undrinkable, but they were almost always letdowns, expected-betters, hoped-for-mores.

Most importantly, they were not as good as fresh.

By last summer, I had whittled down my cellar to about 100 bottles, and was ready to start preaching the gospel of #DrinkNow (although I didn’t coin the phrase; my friend, and fellow HBG writer Tim came up with it). I talked about it on Twitter and quickly found that many of y’all were in the same boat — maybe not at the same point of the cellaring journey, but definitely on the same path. You’d found a bottle in the back of your cellar that never should’ve been aged, or you had a well-cellared bottled that disappointed, or you realized that a beer you always age is even better fresh. Or, you finally acknowledged that a 200- or 300-bottle cellar (you know who you are) is ridiculous, impossible to manage and a waste of great beer.

I have about 45 bottles left in my cellar. Only 10 of them are being aged “on purpose”. Most of the rest are monsters from The Bruery — 750ml bottles over 12% abv that are tough to take down solo, even over a couple of nights (#HoardersProblems). I’m fully aware that the clock is ticking on them. That 2013 Black Tuesday, while likely still delicious, might have already peaked and could be getting worse by the day. Thanks to #DrinkNow, I won’t be making that mistake again.

The post #DrinkNow: why you should stop aging beer first appeared on Houston Beer Guide.

The post #DrinkNow: why you should stop aging beer appeared first on Houston Beer Guide.