Frozen kegs. Stuffed beer?

[H0U5ECAT]

So... I froze my kegs.
Not on purpose. Had my keezer sitting to long at about 1 degree.
Only noticed this on the weekend when I went to pour a beer.

I have three kegs conditioning. have I screwed the batch?
they have been conditioning for about 3 weeks. maybe frozen for about a week.

Rather than turfing them, I've turned off the keezer and letting the beer settle back to unfrozen state.
Has anyone else done something as stupid? Did it come out ok?

 

[slcmorro]

It'll be fine. I've done it before. Turn the keezer off, let them settle. Check the carb levels and drink away when liquid again

 

[Kingy]

Yea I've done it to, just returns to normal once thawed .

 

[H0U5ECAT]

good to see I'm not the only one.
Did it affect the flavour? I'm worried about my awesome IPA in the keg

 

[slcmorro]

No mate, not that I noticed. I didn't freeze any super hoppy IPAs though. Just drink it quick enough

 

[H0U5ECAT]

sure I could manage that.

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

Been there, done that. Defrost them and drink the beer, it'll be good.

 

[gilmoreous]

I froze a hoppy pale ale once and it failed to hold a head and really didnt want to accept carbonation. The bubbles stayed large and it tasted like it had a flat stale sort of characteristic. I had one keg of it that wasnt frozen and it was nice but I ended up tipping out the last half of the one that froze. Definitely taste it and see though.

 

[peas_and_corn]

I once partially froze a keg of beer but didn't realise and kept drinking it. After a while I started thinking "damn, is this beer getting stronger, or am I remembering it wrong?" Well, as is obvious, the freezing concentrated the beer. I thawed it out when I realised, but... well, I suddenly had diluted beer which just didn't taste very good. I had to dump what was left of the keg (about half), which was unfortunate.

 

[danestead]

I froze beer once but it tasted fine once thawed. You would have killed the yeast so any further conditioning which would have been the work of the yeast will obviously not continue. Other than that, I cant see any other problems.

 

[drew9242]

I once partially froze a keg of beer but didn't realise and kept drinking it. After a while I started thinking "damn, is this beer getting stronger, or am I remembering it wrong?" Well, as is obvious, the freezing concentrated the beer. I thawed it out when I realised, but... well, I suddenly had diluted beer which just didn't taste very good. I had to dump what was left of the keg (about half), which was unfortunate.

In hindsight you should transfered to another keg leaving all the ice. Then you would have had a nice concentrated high alcohol beer.

 

[Trevandjo]

How did the beer freeze at 1deg?

I'm about to drop my temp from 11 deg to 0 for lagering. Should I re-think this?

Trev

 

[H0U5ECAT]

The keezer would have been 1 deg at the probe, but then you need to factor in the stainless of the kegs and location of the probe yadda yadda yadda....
Not an exact science keeping a constant temp throughout the entire chestie

 

[431neb]

The thermocouple fell outta my keg freezer and froze some of mine solid about 6 months ago. I was just happy that my cornies didn't split. I don't remember chucking out any beer but I do remember at taking an awful long time to defrost those kegs, even with the freezer turned off. That thermocouple is cable tied to the gas manifold now.

 

[Tahoose]

I'd assume if your freezer was turned off, but the kegs were frozen they would just act as huge ice blocks in an perfectly insulated environment..