Accidentally Froze A Home Brew. What Will Happen?

[booyablack]

Last night I had a few stubbies of my latest IPA that I wanted to cool down fast for drinking. So I popped them in the freezer. Drank 3 out of the 4 but forgot about the last one.

This morning I remembered it was in there and was expecting to find an exploded beer in the freezer. When I checked however, it had frozen solid but was thankfully still intact. So I moved it from the freezer to the fridge to slowly defrost.

My question is, how will this affect the beer? In the past I've found that if you freeze beer, soft drinks, anything carbonated etc. even if unopened, they will be flat when they are eventually opened. Will this happen to my home brew? The cap seems to still have an airtight seal so where could the dissolved CO2 get to if not in the beer?

 

[MarkBastard]

Last night I had a few stubbies of my latest IPA that I wanted to cool down fast for drinking. So I popped them in the freezer. Drank 3 out of the 4 but forgot about the last one.

This morning I remembered it was in there and was expecting to find an exploded beer in the freezer. When I checked however, it had frozen solid but was thankfully still intact. So I moved it from the freezer to the fridge to slowly defrost.

My question is, how will this affect the beer? In the past I've found that if you freeze beer, soft drinks, anything carbonated etc. even if unopened, they will be flat when they are eventually opened. Will this happen to my home brew? The cap seems to still have an airtight seal so where could the dissolved CO2 get to if not in the beer?

Based on my experience kegging I reckon that the best thing you could do would be to let it thaw out, then give it a good shake, then let it sit in the fridge for a day or so. I reckon after it thaws out there will be a lot of co2 in the head space of the bottle at high pressure and the shaking should get that back into the beer. It'll also rouse the yeast of course so the alternative would be to just let it sit in the fridge for two weeks to go back to normal. Or one week, who knows. 2 weeks to be safe IMO.

 

[praxis178]

Based on my experience kegging I reckon that the best thing you could do would be to let it thaw out, then give it a good shake, then let it sit in the fridge for a day or so. I reckon after it thaws out there will be a lot of co2 in the head space of the bottle at high pressure and the shaking should get that back into the beer. It'll also rouse the yeast of course so the alternative would be to just let it sit in the fridge for two weeks to go back to normal. Or one week, who knows. 2 weeks to be safe IMO.

Some CO2 will probably have leaked out via the crown seal as the rubber used isn't too good with subzero temps, but as Mark says into the fridge let it thaw out and give it a couple of weeks to get back o it's feet and it should be ok to drink.

One thing to remember is that freezing can do some funny things to organic molecules so the flavor might be a bit different to the others from that batch.

 

[marksy]

nice man, when i was 18 i used to chuck my long necks in the freezer till they slightly went to a slush. Made for a real cold glass of beer.

 

[booyablack]

Thanks for the replies, they're all very encouraging!

I've still got tons of that batch of IPA left so I'll try and forget about it and drink the rest first. I might label it differently so that I don't lose track of which one it is and then I'll be able to test out all your theories.

I was just damn happy that the thing didn't explode in the freezer in the first place. Will try to remember to post back the results when I do get around to drinking it.

 

[mr_tyreman]

funny you mention this, everytime i get a new fridge i manage to freeze my beer, so i went and chucked temp controllers on all my fridges, i froze mine lastnight, so i let them thaw out and i will see how they go....luck my comp beers for tonight were in one of the other fridges.