a trend of lagering posts...

Hey guys and gals,
I've been lurking here for some time and thought my most recent debacle should be thrown on the internets for all to laugh at (and to hopefully get some feedback).

I made a Cream Ale about two weeks ago... after a week of Primary at 50 degrees, I threw the brew into secondary at 40 degrees in my chest freezer with external thermostat.

A week goes by at 40 and while I am at work, some guys came by my house to install some gutters on my house-- they attempted to use the garage for power, but ended up popping the fuse. Needless to say, when they blew the fuse, they checked out a few of the lights and the chest freezer to see if there was any power -- there was not. they left the power off in the garage because they couldn't figure it out...

I got home and quickly discover the trouble was a blown fuse in the basement and fixed it. I went to the garage and checked for power and immediately noticed the thermostat, which had rose up to about 55 -- I figured it was off for a while and got warm, so I let it go and somewhat forgot about it.

Two days later, I went back out to the garage and noticed the thermostat was at a blazing 65 degrees. I opened up the cooler to see if this was, indeed, the case... it was not. actually it was quite the opposite. The temp node had been knocked out of the cooler and was reading the outside air temp. So my beer was frozen for 2 days. Awesome. I took it out of the freezer and put it on a warming mat, which took about 2 days to get all the ice out. I have since put it back in the cooler at 40 again.

So, I hope you enjoyed the story. And if you've made it this far, I pose a question -- should I throw some more yeast into the fermenter, just incase the stuff that was in the fermenter died? Or, should I leave it since most of the yeast's work was already done?

Thanks in advance for the info.

Welcome to the forum. Ahh, the ol' frozen beer post. :cross:

What was the yeast type? 50°F-primary sounds cold for an ale yeast. That's a lager yeast temp.

Anyway, this is not that big of a deal, especially if you had a plastic fermenter (no cracking glass). If this is an ale yeast, simply wait until the whole thing has liquified and take a gravity reading. If it's finished fermenting, you may as well bottle or keg it. If you are going to naturally-carb it, you'll want to add a small amount of yeast because your yeast are most likely dead.

If this is a lager, I guess you could pitch yeast to do the work that yeast do during lagering, then just bottle/keg like normal after lagering.

It was an Irish Ale Wyeast pack.... so I guess this means I'll be getting some beer a few weeks early!

Thanks for the info and the quick response

You made a Cream Ale with Irish Ale yeast and fermented at 50 degrees? Your yeast is almost certainly dead after the freeze, and I would suggest checking the gravity. 50 degrees is WAY below the recommended temp for that strain of yeast so it may have not ever finished fermenting, in which case, you will need to pitch more yeast to let it finish out.