I had my dark lager lagering in my garage at 30 ± 2 °F for the past week. Well, we hit a brief cold spell here in MN. Nothing too bad. Highs in the 20's, lows in the 0's.
Bottom line... My lager froze. It wasn't too bad. It was more slushy than solidly frozen. I put it inside where it will sit until the temps get back to a nice comfortable 30-35°F range in a few days.
Strangely, my pilsner which is also in my garage has not shown signs of freezing...yet. Maybe the EtOH concentration is high enough :)
UPDATE: oops, now the pilsner froze. I should not be surprised. It was -5°F at 8AM this morning. I should have been a bit more proactive. I knew it was going to get really cold, but I pushed my luck. Oh well, it is almost ready to be bottled anyways. I may need to add some yeast to ensure carbonation. I'm not sure if enough yeast will survive the deep freeze.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
some especially strong (and expensive) German beers are concentrated to high alcohol and gravity by fractional freezing ( filtering out the slush of water crystals and collecting the supernatants...)
Live yeast probably dislike being frozen though
I've always wondered if it was the alcohol in beer that kept it from freezing or the carbonation.
Based on two experiments, I'm leaning toward the latter.
eisbock!
The beer is mostly uncarbonated since it has been sitting for a couple of weeks. I assume most of the CO2 is gone.
Well then.
Perhaps we can just wait for the ever-elusive "beer slush". Or "beer cone".
Hmmm...7-11 might be interested in that idea...
Post a Comment