Temp probe failed - frozen beer cellar

Help! Last night I came home and went to tap into one of the Jolly Pumpkin sour beers that I have stored in my chest freezer/kegerator and discovered that all of my bottles (mixture of 22oz home brews and purchased "specialty" beers) had frozen! The temp controller on the wall was reading 99 so I knew something was off.

I have the typical chest freezer with wooden collar and Johnson temp controller turning it off and on. I've had this setup for about 3 years and it's worked flawlessly. However, about 6 months back, I dropped a keg on the end of the probe and it broke in half, but since, at the time, it was still accurately giving the temp I just left it alone. Now it's reading off the scales and even when warmed in my palms it's showing 130F+ - it's shot.

So, I took the bottles that were undamaged (but frozen), washed them off and put them into another fridge I have.

My question to the forum is: Are all of my beers ruined? Did I just blow hundreds of dollars in beer by not replacing the probe sooner?

Any advice would be helpful.

Thanks!
-Steve

I'm hoping that if they didn't freeze and explode, they will be fine. I don't know....but thanks...you gave me something else to worry about.

I don't think it's common. In the 6+ years of brewing - I've never had a probe go bad before (well... they don't do so well in mash tuns without a thermowell...). I'm very tempted to crack a few and pour off the non-frozen nectar - Ice Beer! But not sure how well a sour would take to process.

Simple method is to taste them. I froze a few gallons of beer once and it was still ok after it thawed.

Yeah. I guess it's time for a "come drink my potentially ruined beer cellar" party! Then, I'll just have to convince (aka beg) the Mrs to let me restock and buy a new probe for the Ranco.

When is this party of potentially ruined beer? I'm in Brooklyn and would show up with some of my homebrew (FYI in bottles but won't be ready for a couple weeks). West deptford is about 100 miles from me.

HBT first annual "north-east Region my keezer crapped out, help me drink it and bring some with you while you're at it" party.... Don't worry it's Just a working title =^)

Put a stick in 'um. Beer popsicles.

I had a similar situation. Some of the bottles lost carbonation and others were fine, it was completely random.

Bottles should be fine if they didn't lose carb.

Woe to anyone who has their kegs freeze. It will separate your beer into extremely strong beer and extremely weak beer, and there is no mixing it back together. Beer isn't ruined, per se, but you'd better hope whatever froze makes a good ice beer. The bottom of the keg will be like beer liquor.

I've put a few bottles into my freezer before in an effort to chill them to a drinking temp faster. Lets just say I forgot them for a little to long.

A few have frozen fairly solid without breaking. They tasted fine after they thawed.

rexbanner said:

Bottles should be fine if they didn't lose carb.

Woe to anyone who has their kegs freeze. It will separate your beer into extremely strong beer and extremely weak beer, and there is no mixing it back together. Beer isn't ruined, per se, but you'd better hope whatever froze makes a good ice beer. The bottom of the keg will be like beer liquor.

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I froze 2 kegs when I had my "mishap". After thawing they were severely over-carbed but otherwise tasted fine. I just shut the gas off, purged excess CO2 as they came back up to serving temp over the course of several days, and enjoyed.

Follow up: So, over the weekend I tasted a few of my freezer-burnt beers... Sadly, the bottles that were cork & caged seem to have been ruined. I tasted three different ones (sour, belgian and an IPA) and they all had that distinct cardboard taste from oxidation. The ones that were capped turned out fine (most of the home brews).

My theory is that freezing the cork caused it to shrink a bit - enough to allow O2 to get around the cork into the beer, then when it defrosted it expanded and blocked the O2 in the bottle. Where as the capped bottles stayed sealed. This check out with you guys?

I'm really bummed out because most of the rare beers that I was cellaring are the cork & cage ones. Hopefully the replacement probe gets here soon...

I would have expected it to take long for the oxidation to happen, but I'd go with your taste buds. The cork hypothesis sounds reasonable to me.

If its oxidized, my heart goes out to you! That's a hell of a loss.