Beer serving temperatures

[jkeysers]

Summer is coming up, and mates are starting to pop around for the odd beer or 3. Most of these guys aren't what you call beer connoisseurs. They just like your average beer, and they like it cold. So I've brewed plenty of simple beers to get me through the summer. I have a keg system, and one complaint I've always had is that my beer isn't cold enough. I had a little old beer fridge which, when checked, seemed to go no colder than about 7 degrees. OK for some beers, not that great for say a Cerveza. And it probably wouldn't have even got that cold on those hot summer days. So I bought a new fridge for my kegs, this one can hold 4 instead of just 2, so even better. The only thing is I'm not sure what temperature to set it at for these sorts of beers?

I was thinking, the colder is probably the better. With a probe inside the fridge and a digital gauge outside, I can get my new fridge down to about -2. The question is, what is the actual tempetaure of the beer in relation to the ambient temperature in the fridge? About the same? A little colder? Warmer?? My gut tells me being a liquid in icy cold metal cylinders would be a little cooler than the fridge temp. Maybe half a degree to a degree colder. Thoughts?

I know it depends on alcohol volume and other factors, but at roughly what temperature would say a standard 4.5 - 5% alcohol beer freeze? I'm just trying to work out how low I can put this fridge so that guests are happy, and beers stays cool for more than a few minutes out of the tap, without fear of finding a heaps of 20L ice cubes in my serving fridge.

Cheers guys.

 

[ibu]

Hey chook,
From what I've read, standard beer freezes at about -1 degree C. Here's a chart http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MG0ceaLvdro/UsMGYfii6pI/AAAAAAAAA3o/c2eCbTFmyjo/s1600/EtOH+graph.jpg

As to what temp your beer is in the kegs, at a guess I'd think they'd be at around the temp you set your temp controller to (or the lowest it gets to if it fluctuates a bit like mine does). The liquid in the keg has a higher specific heat capacity (about four times greater) than the air in your fridge (using water as an example; beer's mostly water anyway). So by the time your probe (which is surrounded by air) turns your fridge back on to start cooling the liquid in your keg has only slightly increased in temperature. In other words, the thermal mass of your keg provides "inertia" against temperature fluctuations. This effect is more pronounced when the keg is fuller.

I had the same thought as you just recently re serving up ice cold beers. Set my keg freezer to 2 degrees C overnight (knowing my temp in the old Fisher and Paykel chest freezer usually drops a couple degrees below the set temp once the compressor shuts down) and when I went to pour a beer the next arvo it wasn't the beer in the kegs that had frozen it was the beer in the lines. That's more what you need to worry about in my experience. I wrapped em up in an old wetsuit and set em up in the middle of the unit to insulate against the wind chill and keep them away from the walls and I'm now drinking my beers at about 2 degrees. Bam. Megaswill. Can't taste a thing now.