Now that you have carbonating beer and are itching to drink it (I know that you are), let’s just briefly mention a few ways to store your beer. If you have room for 50 or so bottles of beer in your fridge, you can put it in there after a week or two of ambient storage. Lagering your beer post-bottling can help to improve, mature, and smooth out your beer (even if it is an ale). Hopefully, you have been able to keep your beer at consistent temperatures throughout the fermentation process. It is also important that you remain consistent in you storage of bottled beer. Here is a picture of my fridge that contains home and commercial brew.

As I mentioned in the last article, you really must keep your beer away from too much direct light, especially sunlight. It is imperative to use a dark place or box that keeps the beer away from light. A homebrew can keep for quite some time. Of course, alcohol level, hop level, and darkness of the beer are all factors that impact the storage life of a beer. Chances are that most of your beer will be gone in a fairly short amount of time. But I’ve always kept at least a couple beers in the bottle for six months to a year in order to see how it develops.

You may find that your beer has not “come together” and the the tastes are disparate for the first little bit. No need to worry, just be patient. Tasting the beers through time is actually instructive for you because you get to see your baby grow through time. It may start out immature, but it will make you proud over time. So, time and patience will come in handy when you go to drink your beers. Oh yeah! Find some people to share with–maybe you can teach someone to homebrew.

This concludes our homebrewing series. If you found this series helpful and instructive, we would love to know. By all means, subscribe, check out all our articles, and (please!) tell your friends. If you want to go a little deeper into homebrewing, get Charlie Papazian’s book, The Complete Joy of Homebrewing. He has a lot more information that can guide you into advanced brewing, kegging, and whatever else you might want to do as a homebrewer.

Cheers!  And we would love to try one of your beers.