Frozen Solid

Northern Brewer General
1

I’m an idiot. My friend and I bottled last night, and I forgot my case of beer in the car overnight. It was -3 and needless to say they all froze. Because they weren’t carbonated yet, nothing broke or shattered. My questions are, will the beer carbonate now after freezing and should I open them and keg the beer if it will not carbonate?
Thank you!

2

I’ve never frozen my beer during fermentation or bottling, so I can’t say for sure that the extreme cold killed the yeast. However, if you have the ability to crack them open and keg, I’d fall back on that sure-fire solution. I don’t suspect you’ll have much success if you thaw them and leave them in the bottles.

3

This can be a good learning experience. I would suggest to keg half and warm up the other half of bottles and see what happens. Of course this is your beer but if you decide to try something like this please post your results and good luck.

4

I think I’ll keg it and save 6 of bottles to see what happens. Thanks for the advice!

5

Freezing is supposed to drop yeast viability by some amount, though I’m not sure whether that is 20% or 50%. Regardless, there should still be enough viable yeast to carbonate - it just might take longer.

Whatever you decide to do, post your results.

6

The last time I ordered yeast from NB, early December, it got really cold. As in 30 below. When the yeast (a White Labs WLP004) arrived via the UPS truck it was frozen SOLID from riding around on the truck all day. I was ready to go with a nice vanilla stout, and since I had some yeast in the bottom of another batch that was about done fermenting I figured I at least had a plan B so I decided to pitch the frozen yeast (after warming it up, natch) and see what happened.

Well, lo and behold, I got fermentation and a really nice vanilla stout (which I just polished off last night). So, miracles can happen. YMMV.

7

As I was about to keg most of this, looking at the bottles they appeared to be carbonating so I let them be. I opened one over the weekend and they were fine. The carbonation and taste were great.