What are the best closures for long term aging?

If I want to lay down a big Barleywine or RIS is there anything better than just a normal crown cap? Does waxing a bottle with a crown cap help?

For Mead/Wine, should I get synthetic corks, amalgamated, or try to find some sort of super premium natural cork?

I'm planning on building a rather large wine rack in my basement, I really want to lay down a couple hundred bottles to enjoy after a long time. I admit that my ambition comes somewhat from the song "Dust on the bottle". It would be nice to have some good wine aged for special occasions or to give to friends that need something good.

For wine there seems to be so much controversy over screw top vs. traditional corks for long term aging. Current synthetics are apparently not too good for aging. Regular corks will fail over time when even small temperature variations. Screw tops are just not seen as high class yet even though they are being shown as the best closure.

For beer I thinking regular caps and wax them, will look nice and should protect the cap from potential rust eating from the outside (not that I'd store them in an environment conducive to rust, but you never know).

I have some bottles I am saving for a couple years for big events, and they are in wax dipped crown caps.

This is something I'm curious about too. I just brewed up an RIS and I am intending to age it until at least the Christmas holiday. I am wondering what the better methods are (aka what various methods do other brewers employ?).

Also, I am wondering what kind of time frame to be warry of...in other words, how long is too long to store? I am sure Christmas time is within reason but I'd like to know about max storage times too. I didn't think 'years' would be possible but Conpewter stirred my curiosity...

-Tripod

I know crown caps can last many years, how else do people expect to work out the vertical tastings for things like Stone's Epic series, the 02 bottles will be 10 years old when the final tasting happens. I like the look of waxed caps though so I think I'll do that anyway.

With that one out of the way, I'm still very unsure about wine though. Premium corks seem good, until you read that 6% of wine work corks gets cork taint from TCA. Synthetic loose their seal to the glass within a year or so (not good data on this). Even regular cork will loose it's seal to the glass in 20-25 years. ROTE closures seem best, except that the bottles have to be made for it, so I can't just reuse corkable wine bottles.

I am about to start a high ABV mead that I am going to want to store until my son turns 21 (he is 3 weeks old) and I don't want to have that ruined because of the cap/cork i use. I was concidering using the plastic champaigne corks and putting a wire cage on them.

I had two beers in the 08-08-08 RIS swap from Evets that were cellared from May 2008 to May 2009 with just plain old non-oxygen eating crown caps. The two that I opened in May 2009 were paradigm shiftingly good. So you are good for one year easy on basic crown caps if your technique is good.

My only concern with crown caps is rust from the outside. Wax will not hold the carbonation in the bottle, but it will keep humidity off the cap so it doesn't rust.

I have laid down four cases of heavyweight overhopped ale so far this summer. Some of them I am not even going to sample for four months. Once I have a guess on when the hops will have mellowed into the grains I'll probably wax them if I think they need cellared more than a year. Under one year, indoor cellar, I am not going to bother unless I start seeing brown spots.

I have two 888's from Evets left. I am going to crack one 08-08-09 and maybe wax the other one, depending on when I think the hop balance will hit.

Waxing is also a sloppy pain the hind end. I have done it twice. I'l wait until I have _at least_ 50 bottles to wax before I break out the grill and buy some tin foil parts. It is a huge mess - go tour the Maker's Mark bottling line if you don't believe me. Outdoors only, and not very often.

I think it was beer advocate pointed out that cellaring beer horizontal puts a yeast smear up the side of the bottle and makes yeast free pouring difficult. Beers stored vertically have all the yeast on the bottom, so you can pour cleanly. Also, Chimay says vertical even if you are putting back a blue for 25 years, same reasons.

I read a thing the other day about corks that pointed out humidity is sealed in there, so at least for beer, you should cellar it upright- as long as the outside of the cork is shielded from humidity changes - eg waxed.

HTH,
P

One other thing you might consider at bottling is setting the cap on loosely and then waiting "a while" for the yeast to put up an oxygen displacing CO2 blanket before you seal the cap. I dunno how long "a while" is, I think that was Uncle Charlie.

I suppose you could hook up a wand on a cobra tap from an empty keg and squirt a CO2 blanket into the bottoms of the bottles before you fill...

Poindexter said:

...
Waxing is also a sloppy pain the hind end. ...

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I wonder if the PVC shrink capsules they use for wine bottles would work and be less sloppy? Or would the edges of the crowns tear the capsule? Maybe if you use a heat gun to shrink it and focus on the bottom of the capsule leaving the top less shrunk. Might also have to get the "over sized" ones.

camiller said:

I wonder if the PVC shrink capsules they use for wine bottles would work and be less sloppy? Or would the edges of the crowns tear the capsule? Maybe if you use a heat gun to shrink it and focus on the bottom of the capsule leaving the top less shrunk. Might also have to get the "over sized" ones.

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I've never actually used them so I'm not sure. I do know some of the ones I've seen for wine have holes in the top to leave the cork "breathe" (which apparently doesn't happen anyway).

I think waxing sounds neat, as long as I can find a good thick wax, the stuff on the Dark Lord bottles I got was a lot more like plastic than wax.

conpewter said:

I've never actually used them so I'm not sure. I do know some of the ones I've seen for wine have holes in the top to leave the cork "breathe" (which apparently doesn't happen anyway).

I think waxing sounds neat, as long as I can find a good thick wax, the stuff on the Dark Lord bottles I got was a lot more like plastic than wax.

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I'm going to have to check the ones at the LHBS tomorrow and see if they are perforated.

AS far as wax goes your LHBS can probably order it and the larger online shop have it in stock Austin Homebrew Supply