Every three to four years, I flip the shelves in my beer cellar, dispensing the weight of the bottles. I’m afraid of the shelves busting, sending the bottles tumbling everywhere. The shelves start to bow, and then I start to worry. So, I flip the shelves, realign the bottles, and weed out, while tasting and taking notes, the filler from the proverbial garden of hops and malt. I take stock of the sugarwater if you will.

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This is not an easy process by any means. I have to remove by hand, every single bottle of beer, take out three shelves, turn them over and place each one back on the shelves. Removing the beer takes forever, flipping the shelves takes less than a few minutes. During the process, there are always beers that are not worth the wait/weight anymore.  Meaning, they are not worth weighing down the shelves, and therefore they are no longer worth waiting to drink. Like, past their prime.

This time I around I was really a bit harder on myself. “I can’t continue to keep some of these beers, they are only getting worse,” I told myself. I have a Trader Joe’s vertical that needs to go, STAT! Also, my Big Hugs vert is losing steam as we speak. Plus there are several other single bottles that we have to drink, “It’s now or never.”

So last week I opened three twelve-ounce bottles from the beer cellar that were all drain pours. I’m expecting a few more of these. But, and here’s the thing, there might be something really fantastic, that stands the test of time, and turns out to taste stellar. Like this New Glarus “Old English Porter” I drank last week during the cleaning session.

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