title_body: Is it possible to invest (long-term) in beer?
upvoted_answer: You can't. At least not like wine or whisky.
  
  It is different from wine because:
  The price increase of wine is based on the vintage. If you a bottle of wine of a high-priced vintage, it increases in market value because over the years the number of available bottles decreases. The value does not increase because it tastes better. The chance of finding a 30 year old bottle of red wine that tastes good are as astronomical as the expenses that come with it. Investing in wine is, as someone put it, speculating in human snobbery.
  
  It is different from whisky different because:
  Whisky is basically an infusion of grain alcohol with oak accompanied by a decrease in alcohol. Unlike wine, you will never get an exponential increase by simply storing it longer because the result can be reproduced repeatedly. Whisky, however, does not benefit from bottle-ageing as the alcohol content cannot evaporate and bottles are not made of oak. In other words, unless you plan on opening a distillery, it is unlikely profitable to invest in whisky. Still, even with a highly durable beverage like whisky, there is a tipping point after which its quality starts decreasing. 
  
  Beer is more comparable to blue cheese because:
  An aged beer is more expensive than a freshly brewed one simply because it is more expensive to produce. Like blue cheese, it is an acquired taste. To most, it would not even taste like beer. Aged beers suffer from the same short-comings as wine but much sooner as there is still active yeast in it (unless they are as strong as wines of course or you store them at very low temperatures).
  
  Beers that benefit from ageing are usually beers that are not fermented well and have too many off-flavours that they tend to lose after time. That is true for many Belgian beers as they are made with a bunch of wild yeast strains that manifested themselves in the brewing vessels. The taste of hops is completely gone after a few years and the ongoing fermentation eventually converts the remaining sugars into a little more alcohol and --more dominantly-- into acid. 
  
  In order to make a significant amount of money from storing beer, you would probably require a speculative bubble. Otherwise, the increase in value will merely reflect your expenses (ie. the cost of storing it), inflation patters and of course the actual demand.
  
  I should add that speculative bubbles can of course appear at any time anywhere, and the current craft beer craze does in fact somewhat bear resemblance with things like cryptocurrencies though not anywhere near that territory. Such a comparison does, however, hint at the inherent risks involved.