One for the Homebrew Mythbusters: Re-Cooling?

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Rossnaree

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Or whatever you'd call it; here's the issue -- My b-i-l was going to toss all the beer, including a couple of sixes of my best homebrew, that was at our place in the Adirondacks because he said it was all ruined anyhow by reason that the beer fridge was temporarily out of commission (two days). He insisted (still does) that beer, once refrigerated, is totally turned to crap once it gets warm or room temp again and is not worth keeping. The MOST I could get him to come up to was saying that it'd never be its best again.

I call BS - am I wrong?

In any event, I saved all my homebrew from the beerocidal maniac. What he wants to do with the rest is none of my business (especially since it was lime bud light). My beer tastes as good as ever.

So, what say you? Thanks in advance. And while opinions are welcome, I'd much rather have cold (hah, pun intended) hard facts.
 
Sorry, no facts here, but it's always seemed to me that once beer gets cold, then warms up again, it's never the same. That could be because my experience has always been with BMC type beer, so maybe it's just nasty to begin with :mug: It seems more "skunked" than usual after a temp change a few times.

I've never let my homebrew go through temperature changes like that, though. It may not be perfect, but it's still drinkable. Only one way to tell...

Cheers
 
Once the beer gets warm after being cold, NOTHING happens to it. The beer is fine and there is no effect on it.

If it was warm for extended periods - like months or years.. it will essentially age faster and reach it's best-drinking-date quicker than a beer that's been aging in a refrigerator or cool cellar. Two days warm in refrigerator and he wants to throw the beer away? That's ridiculous and zero basis in facts.
 
Temperature changes cause changes similar to aging of the beer (and other things... wine is sometimes artificially aged by raising and lowering the temp). So, the beer will be changed but I can't say it would be ruined. If it's a beer that ages well then the temp swings won't have as much of an affect as a beer that's better young.
 
Breweries chill the beer right down and carbonate before bottling. So at some point the beer will have warned unless it's pulled straight off the bottling line and into a cooler and remain chilled all the way through to your fridge at home.
 
That doesn't even make sense... it is exactly what you called it, a myth. It should be easy to prove to yourself, just take two beers, and put them in the fridge. Every two days take one of them out for a few days, then put it back in for a few days. In, out, in, out. After 3 weeks or so, try them both and see if the bipolar beer tastes any different. My bet is that it wont. That's all the cold hard facts you should ever need on the subject.
 
In any event, I saved all my homebrew from the beerocidal maniac. What he wants to do with the rest is none of my business (especially since it was lime bud light). My beer tastes as good as ever.

So, what say you? Thanks in advance....


I believe Sir, the answer is in your question. Drink up! :mug:
 
I had that happen with some of my ales,but I don't think the flavor is effected,at least not very much. Not enough to commit beerocide.
 
Light ruins beer much faster than heating it does. Besides, unless you opened the fridge for a while, it probably didn't lose much of the temperature to begin with.
 
I have never tried with homebrew, but I have noticed that BMC type beer does taste worse after the cold-warm-cold cycle. I have no science, just what i have noticed after parties, etc. :drunk:
 
Pure BS when talking short term - days, maybe even weeks. Staying warm for months will affect most beers. It also depends on how hot + how long. There is a liqour store by me and when I went in one day after this week or two long heat wave I pulled out some beer and asked the woman why the beer is not cold. She said they went to India on vacation for two weeks and didn't t want to pay the electricity, them cheap bastids. She told me the heat got up to 106 in the store. I paid and was kinda ticked thinking the beer might be ruined. Well, it was perfectly fine.



Rev.
 
Light ruins beer much faster than heating it does. Besides, unless you opened the fridge for a while, it probably didn't lose much of the temperature to begin with.

Exactly, that hot and cold BS was the old misunderstanding. A myth.

Think about commercial beers, micros or otherwise, they go through hot cold cycles repeatedly from the brewery to the distributor to the store or bar, and even at the store or bar they may be moved from warm to cold. Even from the cooler at the store, to your car and back into the fridge at home. And yet we don't have consistently bad beer do we?

This is one of those idiocies that just needs to die....
 
Light skunks beer. Temperature does nothing unless, as others have mentioned, there is still suspended yeast which may lead to additional conditioning... and better beer.
 
Not sure what I have noticed in my real life (non interweb factxors infused) needs to be called "idiocies". It is just what I have noticed.
 
ive had skunked bmc from being in a cooler and then hot in the sun then cold again manytimes
 
That's your answer, there.
Not sure it is that easy. People constantly in other threads scoff about the lack of hops in am light lager. It is not like leaving a double-dryhopped ipa in the sun. Maybe it is the fact it is pasteurized and already exposed to one serious heat/cool cycle that makes it more susceptible... Just throwin **** out there at this point.
 
Not sure it is that easy. People constantly in other threads scoff about the lack of hops in am light lager. It is not like leaving a double-dryhopped ipa in the sun. Maybe it is the fact it is pasteurized and already exposed to one serious heat/cool cycle that makes it more susceptible... Just throwin **** out there at this point.

There's hops in even the lightest lager...look at heinekins.... :rolleyes:

Light + Hops = Skunk.
 
There's hops in even the lightest lager...look at heinekins.... :rolleyes:

Light + Hops = Skunk.

There is also talk of those notably skunky beer brewers intentionally skunking them for the American consumer. And I am sure there is much more hops in Heinie, Stella, Becks, etc. than in the usual bmc fare that we are talking about.

Edit - Not to mention, what I noticed had nothing to do with the sun.

Edit 2- or I could be talking out my ass. Just saying crappy beer got crappier when it went cold-warm-cold.
 
As long as the temps remain moderate, it's been my experience that beer remains rather unchanged. If the beer is heated well above room temperature, it can be significantly affected.
 
Personally I would brew a batch, chill and warm up a few, chill a few others and not warm them, then give some of each to him and see if he finds any difference between them. When he doesn't, call him out on it ;-)
 
It's interesting that I see this post today. I was at a high-end bottle store on Thursday, picking out some Ohio beers to take home.

I set them out on the bar area, and waited for a box. I had a pint in the tasting area in the meantime, and the helpful clerk came out and told me that she was boxing up my beers and putting them in the cooler for me. I thanked her and she very seriously explained to me that "Once a beer is chilled, it must be kept chilled- otherwise it will get skunky!" I told her that I was confident the beer would be fine but thanked her for sticking it in the cooler!

ps- the beer is in a box in my dad's living room currently- at 65 degrees.
 
Yooper said:
ps- the beer is in a box in my dad's living room currently- at 65 degrees.

Man, hopefully you didn't pick up anything too pricey... its probably ruined. ;)
 
That beer will be ruined! You must send it to me for proper disposal, it'll be far too skunky to pour down the drain even.
 
My so-far favorite brew, Bavarian Hefeweitzen... mere hours after being "re-cooled" last Saturday after the near beer-death experience:

Camp18Sep11NancyPatti003.jpg


Camp18Sep11NancyPatti002.jpg


The train trestle in the background - train (Adirondack Scenic Railroad) went by just minutes after these pics:

Camp18Sep11NancyPatti001.jpg


A glass of my Apfelwein:

Camp17Sep11NancyPatti009.jpg


A nice end to a great day...

Camp17Sep11NancyPatti020.jpg


Funny thing is, I only left the homebrew up there (I had some of the hefe and some Dortmunder) because when I had brought it up a few weeks earlier, I had one of the hefe's bottle-bomb in a most spectacular way - it literally blew the hinged lid off the cooler and spewed froth and broken glass everywhere. We were at highway speed at the time (~ 60 mph, on a 4-lane state highway), it was my first-ever bottle bomb and I seriously thought that some gangsta type had shot out the back window of the Jeep until I smelled the beautiful hefeveitzen and then I went from being all adrenaline ready for road warrior stuff to almost crying because my favorite brew was now lost... Anyways, I didn't want to transport it all home after that, but after the threat from my b-i-l I took it all home and just used bungie cords to wrap the cooler closed. No worries though, no bombs since that first one.

Anyways, I'd heard the myth several times before and always doubted it, I just never had such a close call with someone actually ready to follow through on it so I figured I'd ask before it ever came up again. Thanks to all! I now feel almost as smart as my brother-in-law... almost.:confused::confused:

- Tim
 
Southwestern Adirondacks, actually, in Forestport. That lake is a part of the Black River that has just made the turn into its notherly journey to empty into Lake Ontario; it serves as the division between the Adirondack region to the east (our side) and the Tug Hill Plateau to the west. It also serves as the division between the Town of Remsen to the south and the Town of Forestport to the north. Very interesting and long histories, there. That trestle and the long tongue of land coming from the south (left side of the pic on the other side of the lake) divide the lake; it was all part of both the damming of the Black River in 1894 to provide water to the New York State Erie Canal System via the Black River Canal, emptying into the Lansingkill over near Boonville, and thence down the Lansinkill into the Mohawk River and eventually the (now) Barge Canal system south of Delta Lake in Rome. The railroad was part of The New York Central RR system, that trestle was completed around 1913 but the earthworks were completed around 1895 or so. My family has owned about 300 acres along the eastern side of the lake (Kayuta) and the southerly side of Pine Creek (northerly boundary) since 1953. Beautiful.... kinda makes a person what he is, if you know what I mean. Never lived up there year 'round, yet - but I'm still dreamin'! The grassy bank in the pic hides the sandy beach between it and the lake (in fact, this camp is on the point where Pine Creek comes in from the east, or right side of the pic, and the lake, out in front), and as you can see in one or two or the pics, most places around the lake are high up on the bank; we're blessed to have a long flat area along almost the entire 1-3/8 miles fronting the lake. The Creek, though -- the banks are quite steep (literally can't stand upright on them or climb without using all fours) and up to 90 feet tall in places. Anyways, we truly love it there.

- Tim

P.S. - I've only been to Schroon Lake twice, both times loved it! Gorgeous scenery -- you've got a nice mountainous region, we've got itty bitty hills. Lots and lots of them, but still nothing like even a few mile north or east of us. It's funny, y'know, how people think of NY and only think of NYC or crime or crowds, when in fact most of the state is rural/forested. Oh well, if it weren;t for the politics, taxes and weather, we'd be almost perfect! lol!!!:rockin::D
 
P.P.S. - BTW, the camera does strange things; the other side of the lake is actually about 1,700 feet away. Looks a bit closer in the photos. The other side of the creek ia about 900 feet away.

- Tim
 
Oh you mean there's beer in those pictures? ;)

oops, I did go way off topic didn't I? :eek:

OK, to bring it back ---- Those hefe's were superfreakinwowzablammofantastic! Even better than they look. And the Apfelfein which is actually more of a "wine" wine was compared, by my baby sister, to a "nice Sauvignon Blanc..." IN YO FACE!!! I RULE dis PLACE!!!! um, not "this" place, as in HBT, but up ...there... ohnevermind.:eek:
 
lol! only about 5 or 6 or more hours away by water, maybe 2 by road, but hey neighbors is naybores. :) I like Alexandria Bay, still have a few friends up that way. A few more in Ogdensburg, very close to where the Oswegatchie flows into the St. Lawrence. One couple, close friends of mine that a long while ago moved to Florida, owned Snake Island in Goose Bay until another friend of mine, not known by them incidentally, was killed on one of the shoals (their deed called for "the island and two shoals out") of the island when his jet ski slammed into it. They sold everything a few months later. It really messed them up, especially after learning that he was a nephew of a friend of theirs. Still, it was a beautiful place.
 
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