Frozen solid kegs whoops...

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zanemoseley

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I had a 5-6 week old 10 gallon batch of Dead Guy ale that I transferred to kegs this last Sunday. I put them back in the fermentation chamber and set it to 40 and hooked one up to CO2 to carbonate. What I screwed up was I forgot to put the probe in the chamber with the kegs, it was sitting on the ground in my basement. So the freezer was going for 3 days straight which has left me with solid frozen beer. I was hoping to have some beer for my step father to drink this Saturday when he visits but that is questionable now as it will probably take 2 days to fully thaw and it still isn't carbed. Perhaps I can get it partially carbed.

So I'm curious how this will affect my beer?? Thats the big question.
 
zanemoseley said:
I had a 5-6 week old 10 gallon batch of Dead Guy ale that I transferred to kegs this last Sunday. I put them back in the fermentation chamber and set it to 40 and hooked one up to CO2 to carbonate. What I screwed up was I forgot to put the probe in the chamber with the kegs, it was sitting on the ground in my basement. So the freezer was going for 3 days straight which has left me with solid frozen beer. I was hoping to have some beer for my step father to drink this Saturday when he visits but that is questionable now as it will probably take 2 days to fully thaw and it still isn't thawed. Perhaps I can get it partially carbed.

So I'm curious how this will affect my beer?? Thats the big question.
Click to expand...

The beer will probably be ok- I'd be more worried about my kegs!
 
Tell him it's an ice beer.

Once everything is thawed out I'd check the kegs and made sure there aren't any leaks.
 
Consider yourself lucky. I had a keg with sanitation water in it freeze this past winter and rupture the keg ! Your beer will probably be fine. Eisbock uses freezing as a technique.
 
I'll tell you exactly how this will turn out, because it happened to me last week.

Your beer is going to separate. The heavier part of the beer, i.e. the part with less water, will sink to the bottom once the beer thaws. For a dozen or so pours, it will be like drinking a barleywine. Then it will slowly mellow. I shook my kegs a good amount to try to mix it up, but it won't ever mix.

Your beer isn't ruined, but it ain't gonna be what it once was.
 
The same thing happened to me, only difference was that I only had about a gallon left in a single keg. I was hooking up my second keg to carb up when I noticed it. I didn't have that much affect with only a gallon of beer in the keg.
 

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