The Naked Pint (40 page)

Read The Naked Pint Online

Authors: Christina Perozzi

BOOK: The Naked Pint
9.4Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
Beer Tools and Craft Beer Needs
Beyond the beer and the glasses, there are a few beer tools that will make your home happy and fulfill your desire for cool beer gear. The only absolute necessity in the list is the bottle opener, for obvious reasons, but the rest will enhance your beer drinking at home and impress your guests.
BOTTLE OPENER:
Sounds obvious, but you should make sure you have something to open a specialty cork-finished bottle. Also, it’s nice to have a cool-looking opener, ’cause then you look cool.
 
ICE BUCKET:
This is important for serving beer at the table. Not every beer should be kept ice cold, but for those that need to keep cool, you should have a good-looking ice bucket. These also work well as dump buckets for beer tasting parties.
 
WINE/BEER FRIDGE:
You’ll need a wine fridge (refrigerated cellar) for storing your fine beer, as we’ll discuss in a moment—something that allows you to be specific about the temperature, which should roughly be between 50°F and 60°F. You can end up spending anywhere between $300 and $2,000 on these, so start wherever your budget allows.
 
KEGERATOR:
This is not a necessity but is a wonderful thing to have for a beer lover. A kegerator is essentially a tiny home version of a draught system. It consists of a small refrigerated unit big enough for a small keg. It will also come with its own CO
2
system, beer line, coupler, regulator tap, faucet and handle, and drip tray. These tend to start at $500 and run up to a couple thousand, which is a big investment. But having a home tap system is a way to make your beer parties that much better.
 
HOMEBREW KIT:
If you want to brew, you’ll need this, of course (see Chapter 9).
 
EMPTY BOTTLES:
Don’t throw these away! You can disinfect them and use them to bottle your homebrew when it’s ready. If you are planning to brew, you’ll need these babies, so keep them in a box somewhere till you’re ready.
Lay Down a Cellar, Lay Down Some Beer: Aging Beer
W
hen you are truly ready to commit to beer, it’s time to move a few things around and make space for your beer cellar. We recommend a small beer/wine fridge. Now this isn’t the same thing as those crappy little fridges that people throw out; we mean a good-looking one with a glass front that allows you to get nice and specific about the temperature. They can run anywhere from $300 to $2,000, depending on your pocket and preference. Beers should be aged between 50°F and 60°F. It’s hard to keep this consistency without a dedicated fridge. Maybe if you live in a cool climate with an actual cellar, you could forgo the refrigerator; just make sure the beer doesn’t get too warm or cold. If the temperature changes too dramatically, the living yeast that is still working in certain beers may die, hampering any hope of additional bottle conditioning and perhaps even creating off-flavors. Keeping the beer out of sunlight is important as well. Sunlight can kill a beer as it does wine, especially if it interacts with the hops, which can cause off-flavors in the brew.
When starting your cellar, think about what you want to accomplish. Do you want beers that would fetch a high price from other beer lovers? Are you focused on the dollar value of your beer cellar? Or do you want to age beers that are your favorites, just to compare with newer vintages? Or perhaps you just want to experiment with aging, just to see how it treats a variety of beers. And how long are you willing to wait? Are you willing to wait a year or two? Or are you looking to drink your stock in the next month?
If you want to focus on monetary value, research the highest-rated beers on beer websites and look up the beers being auctioned on eBay. Find varieties in craft beer bars and stores that fetch the highest price. Check out our list of Beers to Drink Before You Die (page 132). For a more personal take, pick the big beers that you love the most and lay a few down. It’s great to see how your favorite Gueuze or Porter can change. Tasting the older vintage against the new is a great beer party pastime. If you want to experiment, be aware that some of your aging may not turn out so well. Some beers are not perfectly suited to aging, just as some wines don’t age as well as one hopes. There’s a risk in aging beer. First of all, know that lighter beers don’t tend to handle oxidation well; they can end up tasting off, creating some wet-cardboard flavors. And some lighter beers can’t handle the funkier flavors that may come from aging. Note that pasteurized and filtered beers do not benefit from aging. They have had everything living killed, and so no change will happen, except that the beer will most likely go bad.
It’s best to cellar higher-alcohol beers that are not filtered or pasteurized. Beers that age well tend to be over 7.5% alcohol. Alcohol is, after all, a preservative and keeps the beer from spoiling. Beers that have both huge flavors and complex flavors tend to age well. Highly hopped beers can benefit from aging because the hops also act as preservatives, and their bitterness is allowed to mellow out over time. This reduced bitterness means some of the other fruit, spice, and nutty malt flavors can come through. Sour beers like Lambic and Gueuze can get a lot funkier and lose some of the harsh tartness of the style. Belgian brewers of these styles have practiced aging them for years. Here are a few styles that generally benefit from aging:
Abbey Ale
American Strong Ale
Barleywine
Belgian Strong Ales
Gueuze (these can age well even if they are below 7%)
Imperial IPA/Double IPA (though you may not want to mellow out the hops)
 
Imperial Pilsner
Imperial Porter
Lambic (these can age well even if they are below 7%)
Old Ale
Porter (over 7% is best)
Quadrupels
Rauchbier
Russian Imperial Stout

Other books

Outbreak by Chris Ryan
Always by Delynn Royer
The Last Confederate by Gilbert Morris
To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip Jose Farmer
Boys Don't Cry by Malorie Blackman
The Door in the Wall by Marguerite De Angeli
Clean Kill by Jack Coughlin, Donald A. Davis
Chill Factor by Stuart Pawson