Suppose you are an occasional alcohol drinker or a connoisseur. In that case, whether you are highly interested in collecting several brands of alcohol to stock up your home bar for the occasional nightcap, cocktail party, or just because you can, or you just tend to end up with a few bottles of different brands mostly as gifts after a celebration, it is very important to know the best way in which you can store your alcohol properly to preserve its flavor. Unlike food and snacks, alcoholic beverages rarely ever “go bad,” although the possibility of that is not ruled out as it can happen with wine and some liqueurs.
The most outstanding issue with the preservation of alcohol is that it can significantly deteriorate taste and quality. For example, if you are drinking wine that has gone bad, you are more likely going to figure it out almost immediately as it will begin to taste like vinegar. It will be very sad to own an amazing bottle of “booze,” only to find out that its quality has drastically declined. However, there are several ways in which alcohol can be stored to preserve its taste and potency once opened.
How To Preserve Alcoholic Beverages
Alcohol is almost as old as humanity itself. Over the years, different methods and procedures have been discovered and depended on to preserve this beverage. Although the type of alcohol in question is a great determinant of how it is stored, this article focuses on basic ways alcoholic beverages can generally be stored. They include the following :
Keeping Them Cool
“Different strokes for different folks” applies to alcoholic beverages just as it does for humans; there are different ways to store different beverages. There is a rule of thumb for popular distilled spirits, such as gin, vodka, whiskey, and tequila, to always store them at room temperature. However, a couple of alcohol experts and connotations beg to differ. The experts say the ideal range is slightly lower, between 55 and 60 degrees. Keeping them in cool places preserves them much longer. However, sometimes when the temperatures rise, the alcohol begins to expand and can evaporate more quickly. Therefore, it is important to consider storing them in Built-in Wine Coolers for a more stable temperature range. While it doesn’t hurt you to store alcohol in warm places, heat causes liquor to oxidize faster and lose flavors over time.
Rather than waste your money as the taste may seem unpleasant to you, and then it goes down the drain, you should consider buying a dedicated wine fridge so you can properly store your drinks for both short-term and long-term consumption. For products like a martini or vermouth, there is no debate on whether room temperature or lower. It belongs in a wine cooler. Hence, once opened, aromatized wines must be refrigerated to inhibit oxidation. 
Keep Them Out Of Sunlight
If your alcoholic beverage sits pretty on a bar cart, you should make sure that they are in no way exposed to direct sunlight. Alcohol has no business with the sun. UV rays cannot spoil or ruin your liquor, but extended exposure to the sun has an almost similar effect to storing your alcoholic beverages at high temperatures; it speeds up the oxidation process. Researchers from Bacardi have extensively proved that the sun can be even worse and more harmful for the potency of the liquor than warmth. When researchers left bottles exposed to the sun for 15 days, bourbon lost 10 percent of its color, and a bottle of scotch lost 40 percent of its color in that time. It doesn’t just stop there. It also can distort its taste gradually, leaving it almost bland after so much exposure to the sun.
Keep Your Liquor Standing
Although Sommeliers often encourage storing bottles of wine on their sides, liquor begs to differ as it wants to stand erect like a gallant soldier. However, when you keep your whiskey down rather than standing it upright, it can cause the cork to mix and seep into the liquid; this can alter the high-alcohol content and cause it to disintegrate over time. Therefore, if you want your alcohol to last longer and remain potent, it is extremely important to keep the bottles vertically to obtain the best results.
Drink That Last Drop
When a liquor bottle is still full, it is more likely to last longer than the one with just a bit left. The smaller the alcohol content in a bottle, the more likely it is prone to oxidation; this is a process that tends to speed up when less than one-third of the content is left. This is even more reason to finish that opened bottle of liquor up. If your liquor bottle is already opened, the extra air in the bottle will gradually begin to oxidize the liquor and lose its flavor and potency in a shorter amount of time. If the content is in a really small quantity, it is better to finish up the bottle yourself or share the rest with your friends and family. If you do not want to finish the bottle up, you can pour whatever you have left into a smaller bottle. If possible, find one that everything will go in with no space left. Cover this smaller bottle with a cap stopper so that the liquor does not end up going bad.
Flip The Bottle
A beverage like a whiskey should be flipped once every few months to get the cork wet. Tip your sealed whiskey bottle over for a couple of minutes so that the surface of the cork can get wet. Although this isn’t a way to store your liquor indefinitely, flipping your bottle for a short amount of time will certainly prevent your cork from drying out and cracking. If your cork cracks, the possibility of air seeping into your bottle and eventually the quality is very high.
Knowing how to store your alcoholic beverages properly is very important. Unlike popular belief, alcohol can go bad and taste bland or even lose color. However, your alcoholic beverage has no business getting ruined. If you have no intention to store it properly, it is advised that you opt for a smaller bottle.
Author: Arthur Brown
