Warm - Cold - Warm - Cold = Bad beer?

Hey guys,

Multiple times over my (relatively short) homebrewing career, I've had people ask whether or not it's true that beer goes bad if it transitions from warm to cold more than once (i.e. purchased from an uncooled shelf at the store, placed in the fridge, removed from the fridge a few days later, and then placed back into the fridge after the beer has come down to room temp).

I can't come up with a reason that this would cause the beer to go bad, unless the CO2 is coming out of solution and then reabsorbing multiple times which somehow has a negative effect on the beer. I also have never experienced beer going bad because of this, however I can't remember a specific time that I removed/replaced beer from the fridge.

Thoughts?

I am just a new guy take it for what it's worth but it's not warm cold that is the problem it is usally the light. However warm cold will effect it if it is extreme warm or extreme cold or if it happens a ton of times. Just my experience

wester101 said:

However warm cold will effect it if it is extreme warm or extreme cold or if it happens a ton of times. Just my experience

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this is correct.

yeasty said:

this is correct.

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Right this si what we've all been told since highschool. But why?

There are lots of common facts on this forum that get proved to not be facts at all. I think this will be one of them once the egg heads step in. Chemists? Physicists? Generally smart people on the subject?

I wonder how many times it goes from hot to cold before you even buy it......

the proteins in the beer can start to break down if the temp swings too much is what i have been told by my beer distributor.

I tested this on my blog with some Sierra Nevada and found it to be a myth as far as I could tell...

It’s a myth! « Simmering Brews

Since then, I've found that some say the rules are different for un-pasteurized beer.

I think the rules are different for un-pasteurized beer. I have had warm cold warm cold happen before with home brew without effect. Now if you do that with a Coors Light then the beer would be awful. Oh wait Coors Light is awful even during the cold filtering. Nevermind

Brewmasters Warehouse said:

I think the rules are different for un-pasteurized beer. I have had warm cold warm cold happen before with home brew without effect. Now if you do that with a Coors Light then the beer would be awful. Oh wait Coors Light is awful even during the cold filtering. Nevermind

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Interesting. Can anyone comment on why that might be the case?

Brewmasters Warehouse said:

I think the rules are different for un-pasteurized beer. I have had warm cold warm cold happen before with home brew without effect. Now if you do that with a Coors Light then the beer would be awful. Oh wait Coors Light is awful even during the cold filtering. Nevermind

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I heard it was worse for un-pasteurized. Not sure why, the only difference is that there are living things in there. I can understand why hot or even not refrigerated makes a difference, but not why it specifically matters for warming and cooling.

yeasty said:

the proteins in the beer can start to break down if the temp swings too much is what i have been told by my beer distributor.

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I tend to take technical information from a salesman with a grain of salt. They generally don't know what they're talking about. Doesn't matter the industry. They know enough to to say to convince someone to buy something, regardless if its really what they should be buying.

Brewmasters Warehouse said:

I think the rules are different for un-pasteurized beer. I have had warm cold warm cold happen before with home brew without effect. Now if you do that with a Coors Light then the beer would be awful. Oh wait Coors Light is awful even during the cold filtering. Nevermind

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When did you do this? and what was 'awful" about it? what type of off flavor did it get you? Or is this just what you've heard?

For what it's worth, I've had beers sit in a car in the hot summer sun (I'd guess it got 130 F inside) for a few days and it ruined them. It was almost like it soured.

I know that some wineries will subject to wine to swings in temperature because it's supposed to bring out an aged quality in the wine faster than aging it at an even temperature. It could be something like that. Wide swings in temp just make the beer taste old sooner.

I've always wondered what the deal was with that. In high school, that's all anyone talked about but I've never heard it since then. I know my HBs are great no matter the temp. I've even had some swing from an 90-degree garage to chilling in the fridge and then warm up as I took some from the fridge to travel to a party in another part of the state. Always great, always a hit.

I would love to hear if there was a scientific explanation or any real proof to this claim...

-Tripod

How about we start with one...just one...person ever experiencing this. What was the beer, and what were the conditions? Or, summer is coming up, if anyone wants to sacrifice a couple homebrews and a couple pasteurized brews in the name of science. Put them in the fridge and then in a warm/hot place in the house, then back in the fridge, etc.

I recently had some not quite ready Blonde Ales in the fridge for about a week and decided to take them out into room temperature to allow more time to age. They had only aged for about 2 weeks. They stayed at room temp and tested great after a couple more weeks of aging.

I can see how temperature extremes would be more likely to affect unpasteurized beer. However, going from the fridge to room temperature and then back would be equivalent to lagering or cold crashing the yeast, bottling the batch, allowing it to carbonate and then chilling the beer for serving. If I'm missing something let me know.

A few years back, we had a party at my parents place. There was a couple of coors left over, that were sitting in a bucket of ice outside. the ice melted, and the water became warm and kinda nasty looking (I think they forgot about them for a few days...) but one day they washed off the bottles and popped them back in the fridge. Cracked one open, I about died from the stench it had, didn't even want to taste it.

Tell you what, I think i still have 5 PBRs sitting in the garage. Been there a few months juts hanging out with temperature swings. I mat have tossed them, but if they're there when I get home and I remember I'll toss 2 in the fridge and taste them tomorrow after 24hour chilling.

IrregularPulse said:

Tell you what, I think i still have 5 PBRs sitting in the garage. Been there a few months juts hanging out with temperature swings. I mat have tossed them, but if they're there when I get home and I remember I'll toss 2 in the fridge and taste them tomorrow after 24hour chilling.

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Poor guy never repsonded. That was almost two years ago. hopefully those beers did not kill him

I started brewing beer about one year ago in college, my second batch I made was a american amber eleven months ago. When it was bottled it sat in the kitchen at room temp ~ 65 deg for about a month, then put in the frigde. Most of them were drank but some of them were saved, when I moved out of my college house they warmed up to around 80 deg for a few days then were put in the basement for several months, another move and cooled in the fridge. They still taste great. There were never exposed to direct sunlight. Case closed IMHO.

Never exposed to extreme temps either.

Yambor44 said:

I wonder how many times it goes from hot to cold before you even buy it......

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Quite a bit. I bet there is only a very small number of beer stores that keep their backstock cold. Dogfish even showed they bottled cold, then warmed it up to put the labels on. I'm not sure if most beer trucks (micros) are refrigerated, but if not, it could warm up going to the distributor. When we got shipments at the liquor store, the beer came in cold, and went to our warm warehouse. If we only had a beer cold, people wouldnt buy it if they had to drive 20 minutes... I try telling them it will only make a difference if it gets extremely hot.

Hell I've had a keg of my Irish Red, force carbed in my keggerator, driven a couple hours warming up, put on ice and served, that night, warmed up overnight, put on more ice the next day, driven a couple hours to another city warming up, put on more ice for a bit, driven an hour warming up back home, and back in my keggerator. Still a good beer. I did notice it lost a little bit of it's flavor, wasn't quite as good, but was still a solid beer. This was all in the heat of summer too.