The Session #73- The Beer Audit

Wow, it has been way too long. I have been caught up chasing a one year old around. Good thing is that I have lost some weight. Bad thing is I have neglected A Beer in Hand. But I promise to finally get back in the habit. 

This month’s issue of The Session is hosted by Pints andPubs on The Beer Audit:

“Once or twice a year I take a beer audit. I open cupboards and boxes and just have a good look at what’s there. Some beers get moved about, some make it from a box into the fridge, others get pushed further to the back of the cupboard for another day. Often I just stare at the bottles for a while and think about when I’ll drink them. Apart from the enjoyment of just looking at a hoard of beer, It tells me something about my drinking habits…

So, I’m interested to know if you take stock of the beers you have, what’s in your cellar, and what does it tell you about your drinking habits.

This is something that I have looked at in the past couple of weeks. For my birthday, my wife had a bunch of friends surprise me by showing up at the house. She picked up a couple cases of beer, and a couple friends bought beer for me as well. This left me with a plethora of leftover beer. While this is not normally a problem, I just don’t drink if fast enough. I don’t want beers best fresh (especially IPAs) to sit too long, as that really kills them. So by having this fresh beer, I abandon my beer boxes.

I try to keep my beer boxes contents updated on the site. I have some stuff that I should drink, some stuff that can keep aging, and some stuff I have no inclination to drink (maybe 10 years on it will make it good-because I hated it the first time).

What is all fine and dandy is my favorite beer that I have been aging.  Not necessarily on purpose, but because I never got around to drinking it, and then it got lost in the shuffle. So for the past 3 years I have had a 750 mL of Rodenbach Grand Cru. Which I consider with Nugget Nectar, to be my favorite beers. No others come close. My thoughts on having this around.

A) I have no problem having this beer for this long. It will still be great.

B) In this bottle format, it isn’t going to be a weekday drink.

C) My friends aren’t fans of sours, so sharing would be very abnormal to do with them.

I do have some other beers that have and will stand the test of time. The Abstrakt series has been good when I have opened them, since they are BIG beers, that helps. I had a Stone Vertical Epic 10-10-10 the other day, and it was still fantastic (I have one left of both the 09 and 10). I also try to get a couple Sierra Nevada BigFoots every year to hold onto. This and Troegs Mad Elf are two beers that I prefer to have aged for a year. I think it tones down the abv to really smooth them out. 

Really looking at it makes me realize that I definitely don’t drink the big beers (bottle size and abv) as I thought I would. I keep them there thinking that I will eventually get to them, yet I don’t. I have started only buying 12oz to keep my hording to a minimum.

And don’t even get me started on the homebrew I have laying around…