Freezing your lager as part of the process

hoppyguy · February 4, 2014, 2:52am

I’ve spent the last hour reading up on situations where people accidentally frozen their lager and a majority of what I found resulted in:

The beer will be fine
It was brilliantly clear and crisp
You might want to add yeast before bottling (fine if kegging)
This is part of my process
I’ve won awards with lagers I’ve accidentally frozen
The sulphur note may linger
Your secondary will crack (assuming fine if in a keg?)

Did I overlook the smoking gun of scientifically what this does to your beer or can you get away with freezing a lager as part of your process to merely to eliminate some of the preciseness that comes with making a lager? With our winter being what it is, it would be a lot easier to just leave the keg in the garage and let it roll with the winter weather. Is there really a taste difference between a lager that was stored at 32 degrees verse 15-35? I’m just curious, we’re always trying to make brewing easier and if I could eliminate having to dedicate a fridge to lagering and having to monitor it, this would open up some opportunities to use the fridge at a warmer temp for ales during lager season. I might have completely missed something or overlooked an experiment someone did, so please excuse my ignorance if I’m overlooking something obvious.

Cheers :cheers:

hoppyguy · February 4, 2014, 3:13am

I’m looking into what exactly this does to taste and the lagering process, obviously with freezing there is a possibility of equipment failure.

hoppyguy · February 17, 2014, 4:09pm

Nothing, huh?

jmck · February 17, 2014, 11:27pm

Isn’t this how ice beers are made?
(just remember, some places consider ice beer a form of distilling that may not be covered by home brewing laws.)

rebuiltcellars · February 18, 2014, 7:10am

I’m not sure I’ve read anything convincing that would make me want to take the risk to my equipment (and yes, kegs can crack too) by deliberately freezing my beer - except for the Eisbier situation, which I’ll experiment with at some point. But even there, it involves partially freezing in a controlled manner.

If you decide to give it a go, post your results so others can learn as well.

loopie_beer · February 18, 2014, 2:11pm

I also think its hard to tell what impact freezing has on a beer. By theory it will assist with dropping clear if done slow enough. Have I ever accidentally frozen my beer… yes. What impact did it have… don’t know as I didn’t have a controlled sample to compare.

denny · February 18, 2014, 5:10pm

Anecdotal reports are that freezing can induce a permanent chill haze.

hoppyguy · April 10, 2014, 1:40am

Ok, so I froze a golden pils and a vienna lager for a month during our arctic winter. The fridge on average was about 24 degrees and it only got slushy. Both beers taste magnificent, very fresh and have a brilliant clarity. I brewed a second vienna at the same time and lagered it, I’ll report back if I taste a noticeable difference between the two.