Beer Storage

[Journeyman]

The thread about number of brews in 2019 has me wondering - do we have lots of absolute sozzled types on here or do folks have storage issues?

I realise the problem isn't as great for keggers but those would have their own issues I think, being so much larger than bottles.

I recently got this cupboard (for free! Yay!) - I plan to remove the shelves on the side and put more across the width of it. The top cupboard is a separate one - might wind up wall-mounted. It's deeper than it might look - those 2 recent batches on the left at the top are about 7 bottles deep.

What storage do you have? Or are you 24 brews in a year guys drinking it all as it comes?

 

[The Captain!!]

I have storage issues for grain, at the moment it sits in my music studio and I’m hating it. Trying to fit it into my shed so I can have my music room back. 
I keep one shelf for bottles in my store room. That’s all I need. The rest is kegs that sit in the kegerator till I fill them back up or they get swapped out, if I have empty kegs, they sit beside my kegerator. 
In my next home I’m going to build, I will have a designated brew shed and storage area with a bar in my games room for a kegerator or keezer.

Think storage is an ongoing issue for brewers 

[Journeyman]

I've got another lower cupboard for utensils etc. Has a tiled top so it's good re spillages etc. Just the right height to sit in front of, FV on top, and fill bottles. Then there's 2 x fridges. The cupboard in the pic is actually in the garage.

I'm feeling the pain because I've got to get all that into the workshop (1 half of a double garage) which means I'm often standing out there, looking at the mess, and wondering what can go.  

Edited January 4, 2020 by Journeyman

[Otto Von Blotto]

Keg storage I find easier than bottles. 3 or 4 kegs take up a lot less space than 250 bottles. 

I'm on leave now so consumption will likely go up compared to normal, which means they'll pretty much be tapped as soon as they're filled. When I go back to work next month it will drop and the kegs will likely get some ageing time. The kegs not on tap just sit in the corner behind the bar.

[Journeyman]

3 minutes ago, Otto Von Blotto said:

Keg storage I find easier than bottles. 3 or 4 kegs take up a lot less space than 250 bottles. 

I guess I need a win on lotto - kegs, bar, travel at will to Adelaide for ingredients...

[MitchBastard]

I’m currently awaiting kegs and personally can’t wait to be able to fit 2 brews in one place both drinkable at the same time, without having to load up the fridge and battle with the missus as to why I need 10 bottles of beer in the fridge when I have 2 Other fridges in the garage already. One ferment fridge and now one keg fridge. 
 

anyways back on track
 

as a bottler, I have to set aside room for 3 black plastic boxes that would sit in my cupboard for my bottle conditioning brews and then Tetris and pile up other empties in the garage. I choose to bottle in stubbies as I’m not a massive drinker mid week and generally limit consumption to 2-3 stubs per night. With kegs on the way I’ll be able to get half my cupboard back and also free up a bit more space in the garage. Not really sure where I’m going with this but I do welcome the idea of more room for activities.

Edited January 4, 2020 by MitchBastard

[Red devil 44]

I’m renovating underneath my Queenslander, putting walls in, tiling floors, etc, which will be my man cave. I have earmarked an area which will be sectioned off and a wall, door etc for my kegs, fermenters & general brewing gear. I’m generally an organised person which will have empty kegs on one side & full ones waiting their turn on the other side, I don’t bottle much but what I have is a designated cupboard I built for them. 2 x fermenting fridges over the other side, plus adding in lots of floor to ceiling cupboards for storage, my keezer just got relocated to its final resting place in my man cave the other day, I’m a sports fanatic so I’ll display some of my jerseys and signed memorabilia up as well, but that’s down the track, gotta have a long term plan I guess. My new wife loves being married to a tradie as I can build, tile, paint, plumbing etc. Oh and build a keezer

[Red devil 44]

18 minutes ago, Otto Von Blotto said:

Keg storage I find easier than bottles. 3 or 4 kegs take up a lot less space than 250 bottles. 

I'm on leave now so consumption will likely go up compared to normal, which means they'll pretty much be tapped as soon as they're filled. When I go back to work next month it will drop and the kegs will likely get some ageing time. The kegs not on tap just sit in the corner behind the bar.

Will you be emptying those kegs & watching the Test this weekend, I will be ?

[Otto Von Blotto]

2 hours ago, Red devil 44 said:

Will you be emptying those kegs & watching the Test this weekend, I will be ?

Don't know if they'll be emptied because I have no idea how much is left in them but today is beach (not missing it though, radio), tomorrow will be watching it though. 

[PaddyBrew2]

When I was bottling it was a pain.  I was only allocated one narrow cupboard by the missus which could hold 36 pet bottles on two levels. A brew was netting me 24/25 bottles. I used to have to store any excess in the pull out sofa bed which had a little storage unit. Have got rid all of my bottles bar 25 and now have 3 kegs and a kegerator.  The kegerator can hold four kegs so am thinking of getting a fourth I can use for largering

[ben 10]

In my belly!

[thebeerpig]

My beer is stored under the queen sized bed in our main bedroom. We can store up to 380 stubbies when fully stocked (give or take a stubby). The house has a cement base so the beer stored there stays relatively cool in summer.

The 750ml bottles are stored in supermarket cool bags under the taller queen sized bed in our guest bedroom. Haven’t managed to fill the whole area under that bed yet , so not sure how many it holds.

Have got an old caravan in the back yard for storing the empties in until filling time. Also use the fridge in the old caravan to cool bottles of water to add to the FV when the summer tap water is coming out at around 28 - 30 degrees.

[Greenyinthewestofsydney]

5 hours ago, thebeerpig said:

My beer is stored under the queen sized bed in our main bedroom. We can store up to 380 stubbies when fully stocked (give or take a stubby). The house has a cement base so the beer stored there stays relatively cool in summer.

The 750ml bottles are stored in supermarket cool bags under the taller queen sized bed in our guest bedroom. Haven’t managed to fill the whole area under that bed yet , so not sure how many it holds.

Have got an old caravan in the back yard for storing the empties in until filling time. Also use the fridge in the old caravan to cool bottles of water to add to the FV when the summer tap water is coming out at around 28 - 30 degrees.

Under the bed in the main bedroom??? @thebeerpig i would be in the spare room if i even suggested that shit!!!!

[PaddyBrew2]

I’d be fighting with her on purpose so she’d send me to the spare room

 

[Marty_G]

Room was and also was not an issue for me. It wasn't an issue because I had pleanty of room to store them but it was because I had so many to store.  I was an old school brewer in the late 80's early 90's when it was redementary kits and kilos of white sugar. The beer was pretty horrendous so to improve it it was aged for as long as one could. To do this one needed 100's of bottles. So when I returned to home brewing when I retired in early 2018 I did what I was used to and  bottled a massive number of bottles. I remember having three fermenters going at once and at my peak production in mid 2018 I had 300+ stubbies, 200 glass tallies and 150 PET tallies. Also I was getting guidance  here and quickly realised that brewing had evolved.  I got a second fridge, an InkBird, used dry malts, hop additions specialty yeasts.  I realised I did not need all the bottles. I started not to refill them and packaged them up and sold them.   Now I keg and have no issues with storage at all. My garage has 2 fridges in it and an IKEA 8 cube cabinet. i store everything in that.  At the most I have maybe 48 bottles on stock and spare bits and bobs, 3 fermenters and 6 kegs. I still have 10 doz empty stubbies  that I kept as I was not sure how many i would need when kegging. I realised I need bugger all. So will sell those off as well.   It is amazing how few bottles you need once you start kegging.  

[thebeerpig]

11 hours ago, Greeny1525229549 said:

Under the bed in the main bedroom??? @thebeerpig i would be in the spare room if i even suggested that shit!!!!

I’d been storing beer under the bed before I met my missus and she had no idea she was sleeping above a few hundred stubbies until I showed them to her. To my surprise, when she saw them she said that she thought it was a great setup and that she was very impressed .

Haven’t had any explode yet so she is still very happy with them being stored there instead of taking up room somewhere else in the house.

[Journeyman]

37 minutes ago, thebeerpig said:

I’d been storing beer under the bed before I met my missus and she had no idea she was sleeping above a few hundred stubbies until I showed them to her.

You could use a futon mattress on top of them although it might be a problem if you went too long without replacements going in...

[Cassius]

My house is built into a hillside so the bottom floor is half useable rooms and half unusable storage space. Perfectly dark and constant temp; great for bottle storage. The area shown in the photo is only about a quarter of the room so there's lots of space for the increased production coming from the second fermentor I just purchased.

[Aussiekraut]

Full bottles go into this plastic cupboard I picked up in Aldi a while ago (some are in another unit as I ran out of space as you can see). I freed up space for another batch but the shelves are sagging a little, so I need to ensure not too much weight goes on there. I need to drink more of the bottles to the left.

Empties are kept in an old book shelf

 

[Journeyman]

57 minutes ago, Cassius said:

My house is built into a hillside so the bottom floor is half useable rooms and half unusable storage space. Perfectly dark and constant temp; great for bottle storage. The area shown in the photo is only about a quarter of the room so there's lots of space for the increased production coming from the second fermentor I just purchased.

One would want to be sure one is sober before one goes to get more bottles for consumption. The potential for catastrophic failure in such storage might otherwise be high.

[Journeyman]

45 minutes ago, Aussiekraut said:

I freed up space for another batch but the shelves are sagging a little, so I need to ensure not too much weight goes on there. I need to drink more of the bottles to the left.

I'd get some ply or similar and make upside down T shapes to fit in the centre of each shelf - do it all the way to the base and each would support the shelf above so the sagging stops.

[Cassius]

40 minutes ago, Journeyman said:

One would want to be sure one is sober before one goes to get more bottles for consumption. The potential for catastrophic failure in such storage might otherwise be high.

Haha luckily I usually restock the fridge in the morning, usually sober.

[Yuley]

On 1/4/2020 at 8:51 PM, Greeny1525229549 said:

Under the bed in the main bedroom??? @thebeerpig i would be in the spare room if i even suggested that shit!!!!

Yep. I tried storing them in the walk in robe over Xmas. Wasn't appreciated.

Safe to say, my bottles are stored wherever the wife is least likely to crack the shits at. (Currently the top of the cupboard in the laundry)

[Poddy]

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This is my storage. It’s in the built in cupboard in the spare room. I reuse the bottle boxes & use small stickers to label what’s in what. I’ve also got my fermenting fridge next to it. 

[Marty_G]

@Poddy looks very organised. well done.