Underground Aging

I need a place to bulk age kegs but I don't have room to build a cold room. I also don't have a basement or celler. What if I sunk a couple 50 gal barrels into my yard. How deep would I have to go to keep a constant temp year round? I live in the NW so weather is pretty mild most the year and my property is pretty sandy so It would not be much work to put them in the ground. Is this a stupid Idea?

For ground source heat pumps which are looking for that "year round stable temperature", the general figure is about 6-feet. It varies by what part of the country you're in and could be as deep as 9-10 feet. Pacific NW you're probably okay with 6-feet I would say. I can't say this sounds like a great idea (to me). I just trying to think of the logistics and such. You don't have a place where maybe you could build something into a hill? What about leasing some property (or a building) that meets your criteria? I guess I would rather just store them at "room" temperature if it were me.

ya 6 feet is a little to deep. I do have a hill side, but how far back into the hill would I have to go? I was hoping that if I got the top of the drum a foot from the surface it might work?

http://www.geo4va.vt.edu/A1/A1.htm Here is a map of underground temps around the country. According to this, 6-feet is going to get you a +/- 10 degree spread through the seasons. Depending on soil conditions, between 20-28 feet will keep you constant year round. As can be seen in this article, even trench-type ground source systems buried at 10-feet have temp swings.

That was a great link! That pretty much answered all my questions. I guess I'll scrap that idea.

It might be worthwhile. Make a test hole and measure the temp.

I love this forum. You folks have the most off-the-wall ideas! :rockin:

Balls-out, dude, go balls-out.

Build yourself a fallout shelter.

When you say PNW, there's a lot of variation in what that means. Seattle? Yakima? Bellingham? Portland?

Depending on where you live, you might be able to swing it. Ten or twenty degrees seasonal variation may not be a killer if it's 40-60 degrees, and depending on your soil type you might be able to keep daily swings down to a few degrees if the top is buried 2 feet.

http://www.bomb-shelter.net

For the truly paranoid, you can get yourself some really, really fancy bomb shelters. I am sure that you could store hundreds of kegs underground in this thing! And, your beer would be safe from nuclear bombs, tornadoes, hurricanes, theft and many other natural disasters. They are pricey, but you have to ask yourself how important is your beer.

FWIW, This was done on this blog. I thought it was a cool idea:

http://madfermentationist.blogspot.com/2008/08/buried-treasure-mead.html

nealf, that is a good link. I like what he did. I also read the same blurb in Papazian's book, but haven't done anything about it yet. I would definitely like to try this some day.

Maybe I will give it a try, I'm going to have a backhoe at my house for the next couple weeks anyway. I live near Gig Harbor so the swing would most likely be around 40-60. My soil is mostly sand and clay which according to the chart on turbo's link has the lowest thermal conductivity. I also live on to big a big hill so the ground is pretty dry.This might work out, I'll bury one and see.

nealf said:

FWIW, This was done on this blog. I thought it was a cool idea:

http://madfermentationist.blogspot.com/2008/08/buried-treasure-mead.html

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Imagine if you bought a house and came across a stash like that ......:cross:

I bet a batch of barleywine would be awesome in a deep hole in dense clay soil... forget about it for two years or so. awesome. I love the idea

nealf said:

FWIW, This was done on this blog. I thought it was a cool idea:

http://madfermentationist.blogspot.com/2008/08/buried-treasure-mead.html

Click to expand...

I'm planning on digging it up for the first time next weekend. Hopefully the bottles have survived the conditions (and neighbors).

Instead of going very deep, why not just dig a pit and buy some cheap home insulation and wrap it, then burry it in a small hole. If it's good enough for houses it's good enough for your pit. Also to test it you can buy a cheap thermomiter with a long probe. Then you can take readings when it get's hot and when it get's cold.

Hmm, I wonder what you could do with copper wire tubing in this mess like a wort chiller?

Keeping it simple with what's already cheaply available.

http://images.google.com/imgres?img...llars&hl=en&safe=off&rlz=1W1DKUS_en&sa=N&um=1

I would do a root cellar. Then run power to it and you have total temp. control

I want to be able to access them pretty easily. Not an everyday access, but monthly for sure. That's why I don't want to put the barrels 6 feet deep. If I could get the top of the barrels a foot deep then I could build lids that bring them flush with the ground.

smoa said:

I want to be able to access them pretty easily. Not an everyday access, but monthly for sure. That's why I don't want to put the barrels 6 feet deep. If I could get the top of the barrels a foot deep then I could build lids that bring them flush with the ground.

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you cant do that because you have to get below the frost line. The ground stays a constant temp. at a certain debth.

Look into a root cellar. If you have a hill half your work is done for you already.

I just looked at two diffrent frost line maps. This one show my area haveing a frost line of 9".
http://mtcengco.com/Frostline_Map.html
The other one I looked at says 5". So if I get a foot of soil above the barrel, then insulate from the top of the barrel down to the contents ( Kegs ) I think I might be ok.

i say go for it. it can't hurt to try. at any rate, it will definitely be more stable than room temperature... and you won't have to build and then power some sort of fermenter space (chest freezer, etc).

i don't have a cellar/basement here at my house...and the house is small...i've thought of doing something similar. FWIW, I live outside Sacramento and I ferment in a relatives basement that's about 5 miles away. The basement is roughly 8 feet tall with about 6.5 below ground level... and the basement temps have ranged from roughly 50 to 70F over the last year. Our ambient temps range from 25-115 here over the changing seasons.

what's the worst that can happen?

smoa said:

I just looked at two diffrent frost line maps. This one show my area haveing a frost line of 9".
http://mtcengco.com/Frostline_Map.html
The other one I looked at says 5". So if I get a foot of soil above the barrel, then insulate from the top of the barrel down to the contents ( Kegs ) I think I might be ok.

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I live in the washington dc area and according to the map of the frostline. I should be somewhere between the 10-15" range.
however, I know a lot about dirt. I run an excavation company. We are required to bury lines 32" below the surface for frost.
http://www.allaboutbeer.com/features/231cavebeers.html

along time ago storing beer in the ground was the only way.
With that said, do what you will and please let us know how it turns out. If it turns out bad, I told you so! If it turns out really good, make sure to rub it in my face by sending me some

Yeah, this is what you want, isn't it?

When I move I plan on doing something along these lines. Interested to see what you come up with.

Most of the NW has pretty temperate weather so I'd imagine that 50 gal barrels 1 foot deep would give a relatively stable temp. Go for it, run a wireless thermo and post some data!

Don't forget to paint a giant X on top of where you bury it.

Hey SMOA, I'm also in Gig Harbor (Raft Island). Maybe we should meet up for a brew day sometime.

Somewhere I have a picture that I took of the room in Howe Caverns where Ommegang stores the cave-aged varieties of their beer....Got any buddies with a cave on their property?

I live in a small house in PDX with no basement or garage. I have thought about digging an insulated hole under my crawl space for this exact reason. People with basements might think it sounds crazy, but 20 degrees annually beats the 30 degree temp shift I can get on hot summer days... Still though, I've yet to move forward...

kracken41 said:

People with basements might think it sounds crazy, but 20 degrees annually beats the 30 degree temp shift I can get on hot summer days... Still though, I've yet to move forward...

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damn! at my house in the ca valley at noon yesterday it was 90, at midnight it was 40. as i write this at 0645 its a pleasant 46 outside. and when they built my house two years ago, they compacted the **** outta my lot. its so dry and tight i need a backhoe to excavate anything. no shelter for me!