Freezing a Dogfish Head 120min IPA

I recently was able to get hold of a bottle of the amazing Dogfish Head 120 minute Double IPA. While drinking it over a game of Axis and Allies with my roommate, it got too warm for me to palate (probably an hour or so after opening... gotta sip it slowly), so I threw the glass in the freezer to put a quick chill on it so I could finish it. As it worked out though, I got back to my A&A game, and forgot about my poor beer in the freezer.

I finally remembered like 2 days later. Not expecting a 21% ABV beer to freeze, I expected to find flat, stale, ruined albeit cold beer. What I found was the beer frozen solid with what looked like stalagmites growing out of the surface of the freeze. I wanted to show someone else, and stuck it back in the freezer immediately. I checked it a couple of days later, and the stalagmites had grown even more! They continue to grow! I uploaded a couple of pictures of this phenomenon to my profile (the resolution is huge, and I didn't want to mess up the thread with their huge size) for you guys to have a look.

I really don't have any idea why this is happening, so I called a ChemE buddy of mine and he'd never heard of this either, but his best guess had to do with ethynol crystal formation and growth. Can anyone else provide a better explination?

Wow... that is really funky looking! I was expecting to see some straight edged, clear ice forming. That looks like something from a sci-fi movie! Do you by any chance have one of those spinning things used for getting water off salads? If so, dump that into the salad spinner and give it a ride for a while. Now you've extracted pretty much all of the alcohol from the beer and would have an even higher alcohol content!

It's related to this effect I'm sure. The carbonation probably plays a huge part too.

Ice Spikes

well, given the mechanism for the ice spikes, I don't think its the same thing because its frozen solid, and the stalagmites continue to grow... I'm onboard with the carbonation part though. I'll check it tonight (those pics are a few days old), and will see if i can't get some more up to date pictures.

Really freaky pix!

...though somehow it doesn't surprise me too much...120 is barely recognizable as beer.

Beer_Pirate said:

While drinking it over a game of Axis and Allies with my roommate,

Click to expand...

who won? awesome game.....

Well, it was my first time playing, and my roommate is a longtime veteran of the game, so he won. We were playing the A&A Europe game, which just concentrates on the European front (which is more than obvious from the name), and doesn't even bring Japan into the war. We'd heard that it was a "balanced game," but as it turns out, someone who knows what they're doing with the allies will be able to crush Germany simply because the resources are tipped overwhelmingly to the Allied side. You've just got to keep Germany at bay long enough to build up your war machine, then its all over... wave after wave will destroy them.

Your chem E buddy is close, unfortunately i dont think your freezer quite goes low enough to make ethanol crystals (ice crystals). However I am curious what happens if you poke one, is it solid or can it be manipulated, or is it filled with a liquid. I would assume what you have going on is a strange form of freeze distillation. The non ethanol part of the beer (basically water) is freezing around the ethanol creating strange formations with the inclusion of CO2 escaping pushing the sludge of a liquid upward. Let me know if you still have it around and can poke at it. Whatever it is it definitely involves unfrozen ethanol being pushed to the surface by frozen water, esp if it continues to grow.

well, my explination is how my aeroE brain could discern his chemE speak. There are reasons I like airplanes more than molecules, but I digress. Anyway, something told me that it wasn't cold enough to freeze the ethynol (Jager doesn't freeze in my freezer), but that was the best explination he could give me off the top of his head.

I've still got it in the freezer, and its still growing (tallest one is probably approaching 2 inches in length), and i'll give it a poke tonight and will reply back.

checked it again tonight, and there is more growth. I added 3 new pictures to my profile. They have date stamps, and you can see the growth over a 5 day span. I poked one of the "structures" like CRAZY suggested, and it had a very slushy consistency... not unlike a firm snow.

Then I tasted it.

It was so alcoholic it burned a little. It kind of had a beery twinge to it at the end. I stuck it back in the freezer... i'm going to see how far this goes. if it starts growing out of the glass I'll be truly amazed.

Yea, thats kinda what I thought would happen. Basically what you have is the non ethanol freezing, the CO2 is carrying the unfrozen ethanol upward with more of the water freezing around it, creating the structures. You more or less have a crazy form of freeze distillation going on, considering you started with dog fish 120 at 21% you have some serious alcohol going on, no wonder it burned Its really cool. Im now headed to check out the newest pics.

yeah... the new pics are the best I could do. The original pics were taken by a buddy of mine with his WAY superior digital camera. mine sucks, but atleast it still gets the point across.

The Allies always won the old game too. Spend 6 turns buying nothing but infantry and the axis don't stand a chance.

We used to play make up all kinds of complicated rules, bidding for sides, playing blind (two boards, in different rooms, so you couldn't see what the other team was doing). Haven't played in years.

murphyslaw said:

The Allies always won the old game too. Spend 6 turns buying nothing but infantry and the axis don't stand a chance.

We used to play make up all kinds of complicated rules, bidding for sides, playing blind (two boards, in different rooms, so you couldn't see what the other team was doing). Haven't played in years.

Click to expand...

The only was the Axis have a chance - two words -- HEAVY BOMBERS!

murphyslaw said:

The Allies always won the old game too. Spend 6 turns buying nothing but infantry and the axis don't stand a chance.

Click to expand...

My roommate would actually take exception to that . He likes to start taking the territories and commondeering (sp?) the Allied economy.

murphyslaw said:

We used to play make up all kinds of complicated rules, bidding for sides, playing blind (two boards, in different rooms, so you couldn't see what the other team was doing). Haven't played in years.

Click to expand...

I really like the 2 boards in different rooms idea... that's $#@%ing awesome!

Beer_Pirate said:

I really like the 2 boards in different rooms idea... that's $#@%ing awesome!

Click to expand...

Yeah, its complicated, but fun. You only tell the other team when you move into enemy territory. A successful build up and sneak attack is devastating.

I would guess that it is small particles of dirt/dust coupled with humidity in your freezer providing nucleation sites for water freezing.

This is what happens when you have too much unprotected sex in a gay bath house; anal warts.