A dozen-or-so bottles I have in my lame make-shift cellar.

Guybrush · Post by **Guybrush** » Sun Jan 25, 2009 10:12 am

Nice!!!!

That is a fantastic stash you have. Lots of stuff I'd love to try; Breckenridge vanilla porter, great divide hibernation, that cherry porter looks good too...

Good work, i knew there was more people with make-shift cellars....

mjohnston · Post by **mjohnston** » Thu Jan 29, 2009 12:43 pm

SteelbackGuy · Post by **SteelbackGuy** » Thu Jan 29, 2009 12:46 pm

The case of Red Cap looks the most appealing..............

mjohnston · Post by **mjohnston** » Thu Jan 29, 2009 1:00 pm

LOL, yeah, I'm just using it to store vintage stubbies (empty)

I really want to find a way of organizing it. Some of the larger shelving that others posted looks nice - easy to see where things are. Mine's so packed in there that I've got to pull a bunch out to get at most of it.

Jon Walker · Post by **Jon Walker** » Thu Jan 29, 2009 1:37 pm

Nice stock! Sometimes the fun of having things so tightly shelved is that you end up forgetting about certain beers that you rediscover many months (if not years) later. If they are good agers then it's a happy discovery.

My only advice would be to reinforce those shelves. It looks like you have a lot of bottles stacked on some pretty thin plyboard. My shelves started to sag so I built braces underneath. Imagine the horror if you had a collapse?

mjohnston · Post by **mjohnston** » Thu Jan 29, 2009 1:50 pm

Hmm, good call on the reinforcement. It seems to be holding up... for now, but I haven't really assessed its structure. For all I know the whole thing will just tip over if it's not attached to the wall or anything.

inertiaboy · Post by **inertiaboy** » Thu Jan 29, 2009 2:40 pm

I use Gorm from Ikea for my storage. I cut up some scrap wood to put on backing and sides so that bottles can't fall off. I then screwed the whole unit onto some exposed studs for stability.

The only drawback is that the shelves are composed of a number of slats instead of one large piece of wood, but I just space the bottles out a bit to avoid the cracks.

Lots of advantages to this setup: customizable shelf heights on setup, you buy exactly the shelf pieces you need, and it was so easy to put together that even I could do it.

I'll get some pictures together when I get a chance.

icemachine · Post by **icemachine** » Thu Jan 29, 2009 4:45 pm

Looks like 5/8th's plywood - not likely to give way unless it has not been properly anchored at the end rests.

Bobsy · Post by **Bobsy** » Thu Jan 29, 2009 4:50 pm

Mat - wow, just wow. One day I will have a cellar like that. Great variety, but not overly excessive. Very admirable.

mjohnston · Post by **mjohnston** » Thu Jan 29, 2009 6:16 pm

Yeah Bobsy - most of them are things I haven't ever had yet so I'm looking forward to drinking them. Hard to resist

How does everyone keep it organized (both physically and from an inventory perspective). With a lot of different bottles and constantly changing stock, and limited space, what can you do?

Mine are just randomly shoved in there. I've got a spreadsheet to keep track of what's there, the year, how long it should be aged, a link to RB, etc. Seems to be working so far but hard to keep updated accurately.

Bobsy, BTW, might I have seen you at Cole's? I saw some women that might have been interested in picking up younger men... but I didn't know which of them might have been you.

Jon Walker · Post by **Jon Walker** » Thu Jan 29, 2009 6:35 pm

One of my organizational tips...for what it's worth...

I usually write on the labels with a sharpie the date of purchase (11/06 for example) on any ageable beer that doesn't have the production date on the label. That way I can keep track of similarly labeled different aged bottles and tell them apart.

Bobsy · Post by **Bobsy** » Thu Jan 29, 2009 8:44 pm

mjohnston wrote:Bobsy, BTW, might I have seen you at Cole's? I saw some women that might have been interested in picking up younger men... but I didn't know which of them might have been you.

It took me way longer to get that than it should have!

Torontoblue · Post by **Torontoblue** » Thu Jan 29, 2009 9:26 pm

Jon Walker wrote:One of my organizational tips...for what it's worth...

I usually write on the labels with a sharpie the date of purchase (11/06 for example) on any ageable beer that doesn't have the production date on the label. That way I can keep track of similarly labeled different aged bottles and tell them apart.

I just spent the weekend doing this on the caps and labels, seeing as I've now bought more of the same beers I already had. It seemed really anal at the time but it makes sense. Plus it was a pain in the backside trying to keep my Excel spreadsheet up to date.

inertiaboy · Post by **inertiaboy** » Thu Jan 29, 2009 9:31 pm

Here's the Gorm shelving in action:

Additional pictures are here.

Jon Walker · Post by **Jon Walker** » Thu Jan 29, 2009 11:13 pm

inertiaboy wrote:Here's the Gorm shelving in action:

Additional pictures are here.

Nice stock!