Keeping Beer Cold on a Road Trip

Yeah, traveling this time of year I wouldn't worry. You could keep it cold with ice/ice packs or just leave it ambient in the trunk.

Summer time...well that's a different story all together.

 

Lets not overthink this...... ice is the answer. And even without it, beer that is not cold for limited amount of time is fine.

 

I make my own ice blocks with plastic take out containers and food storage containers. You can make different sizes. Line the bottom and add more on top. The blocks will stay ice longer than cubes. Cheap and easy

Enjoy

 

man back in the day we used the **** ass ice chest. 2 or 3 green garbage bags with a couple of bags of ice thrown in them. Things have come a way since then

 

A good way to tell if your present technique is adequate is do your beers stay cold during the ride, and are they still cold when you get home? If the answer is no, the solution is more ice paks and/or more ice.

 

I wonder how much the brewers of IPA worried about this when they despatched their beer in wooden ships to set off on a long sea journey to tropical climes.

 

I was waiting for that.

 

When it got there it was just a pale ale by then, and that was the intent for this beer.

Seriously though, do the hops used in European beers degrade in taste as much as American hop varieties, and isn't that the real issue?

 

Done that. Also some friends and I had a keg in a garbage can full of ice in the back of a station wagon for a week. But that was a long time ago. Good old days.

 

I wonder what they would think if they tasted a Heady Topper and someone told em it was an IPA?

 

They might think the Heady Topper had "gone bad" during the voyage.

 

Maybe you could try freezing the beer. That has to be cheaper than buying all that ice. It's probably not good for bottles, but cans should be fine.

 

It works for Anheuser-Busch (actual process might be difficult except for those who own the most expensive RV models):

--- Wall Street Journal, April 26, 2006

 

Can you explain this more to me...

Also I take it you don't trade beers much, if so I would hate to see how much packing you use to reduce the effects of vibrations.

 

Sure. First your right about trading, in fact I don't trade at all.

As for the extra padding between the car floor and the ice chest, one of the useful things about this site is the information you can pick up here and there.

Basically a brewery representative from Sierra Nevada who spends a fair bit of time interacting and sharing information on this site, once described a problem they feel exists that is caused by the vibration from transporting beer. He referred to it as "scalping."

With vibration some of the CO2 comes out of the liquid and into the head space, building up internal pressure. Effectively, that extra pressure can be great enough to force some of the CO2 out of the bottle and it can then get replaced by oxygen leaking in. Not a large amount by any means, but they feel this "scalping" is enough to have an effect on the aromas and eventually to increase the rate of oxidation of the beer.

So if I know I'm going to driving a long distance and buying some new stuff that I pick up on a trip I try to have a few layers of padding between the car floor and the box, or whatever, I am using to carry the beer. Overkill? Maybe, but....

One of the reasons I'm convinced scalping and vibration can be a problem is that if I open a new bottle of seltzer water fresh from the store I get much more fizzing and foaming from the carbonation than if I refrigerate that same bottle for a few days and then open it. Apparently the cooler liquid can reabsorb the CO2 faster reducing the pressure in the air space.

 

Interesting, are you talking about road salt or table salt? Sorry for my stupid question.

Another simple option for OP, fill you're cooler with ice as usual. After a leg or two down your voyage, drain the water out of cooler and re-ice. Regardless of how long your trip is, ice is cheap enough option at every gas station... consider it your beer insurance

 

Cooler and ice...your good

 

ummm a cooler?

 

Aside from no direct sunlight, I'm more concerned about extreme temperatures when transporting my beer. You're using a cooler with ice packs and doing day trips, you're fine. The only other thing I could suggest is if you're transporting growlers, tape the caps/seal with duct tape as extra insurance to reduce CO2 loss.

 

I still find this baffling.

So what measures does Sierra Nevada take to reduce vibrating while bottling, or packaging, or shipping or delivering to stores for retail.

Basically the only way to get a vibration free beer is to drink it directly from the bottling line.