Cold Weather Trading / Winter Shipping Thread

Ready to drink upon opening i would say !!!

 

I'm glad the bottles survived. As far as this new issue, a nice friendly BM should be in the progress.

 

Cool your beers survived ok during their afternoon chill-down

Sorry, you got "bottle swapped"....that sucks

 

The temps I quoted were the temperature in my sunroom....have a thermometer hanging up out there, as I use it as my extended "beer-frig" during the winter months.....

I know from experience beers I stored at those temps did not freeze, ethanol "abw" chart be damned....

Direct experience trumps a chart somebody pasted online, at least in my book....and guess what....

his beers arrived just fine!

 

I often wonder how much the packaging helps to insulate the beer. I live in CT., so I sometimes have to worry about a box sitting outside for several hours in cold weather. Luckily, I've never had a bottle freeze on me but just how much of a benefit is it to have these beers packed in bubble wrap and resting inside a bed of packing peanuts?

Obviously it helps, but to what extent? I'm not a "science guy" but I have to think that it keeps the bottles at least a few more degrees away from freezing.

 

No worries!

 

The bubble wrap and peanuts are pretty good insulators. Typically the delivery trucks are not very well heated and the warehouses that the stuff sits in are not heated to very warm temperatures but both the warehouse and the truck would probably be somewhere in 50's to 60's. Depending on the temperature you would probably have a few hours before disaster strikes.

 

Wind chill has no effect! Only on living beings. If its 33 degrees and windy as hell....say a wind chill of 20 degrees? Water wont freeze!

 

Wind chill only effects living beings because it chases heat away from the body. It can be 33 and have a wind chill of -50 and it wouldn't matter since the air is still 33 degrees.

 

It'll be fine

 

You should send him a message. And he needs to make it right. If he doesn't, creating a bad trader thread is a good idea.

 

Yeah I did. Also, to add onto it...the bottle of Permanent Funeral included was dated about a month older than I was told it would be.

 

Wind will make anything reach ambient temperature faster, not just living beings.

This is important because the issue when shipping beer is not just whether it's cold outside, but how long the beer sits outside (or somewhere with outdoor temps). The less wind it's exposed to, the slower the beer will cool off, so the longer it can sit (in cold temperatures) without freezing.

TL;DR: On cold days, beer sitting out on your porch will freeze faster if it's also windy.

 

Had a couple of Vanilla Ryes sitting on my porch for 4-5 hours during the workday in single digit temps (totally forgot to have them redirected to a Fed Ex office). Despite the high ABV, I figured I was definitely screwed. Fortunately, all was well.

 

Agree! I'm just saying if it's 33 degrees with a hundred mile an hour wind you will feel much colder but water will not freeze. If you put 50 degree water outside in 33 degree weather with no wind it will cool slower then if there is wind since the wind pushes away the heat.

 

What type of insulation can I use in packing to avoid freezing?

 

if it is just a few cold days, then those chemical hand warmers.
otherwise, wait - if the overnight lows are below 20 or so, pretty much any beer will freeze if left out...

 

I'd like to add that if you starve the handwarmers from oxygen, they will deactivate. During hunting season I will actually put handwarmers that I've only used for a couple hours in a ziplock bag to starve them, then use them again later. It works.

 

So I recently shipped 2 boxes through weather that was in the low 20s and didn't have any issues. Besides alcohol, the dissolved CO2 and the contained environment (constant volume) both work in your favor when you are hoping the beer doesn't freeze. That said, anything below 20F seems like it could be problematic. Yes, the beers are insulated inside the box, but that only buys you some time, as they will eventually reach equilibrium regardless of how much foam and bubble wrap is in the box.

 

My personal rule is only trade if there's going to be > 20F days along the route, the lows at night have to be > 10F and there's no Sunday involved in the transit. I'll also only ship > 7% ABV beers to other cold climates or the west coast. I operate under the assumption that there really isn't much time during transit that the box isn't getting jostled around in a truck or at a shipment center and there's likely more time spent above freezing than the weather indicates. So far so good <knock on wood>




I once had a bunch of lambic coming in from Belgium last winter and the box was delayed due to snow. There was a temp drop that made it a real nail-biter, but everything arrived safe and sound, and there were no signs of freezing.