Keeping beer cold

If it's hoppy, keeping it cold is very important.

 

I have been to 8 breweries in the last week going thru maine and vermont and every brewer or person said same thing....as long as not cooking in hot car, temp not overly important and the swings of cold to "room" temp will do no harm.

 

Keep all beer cold. My opinion.

 

Hoppy beer keep cold, if you can't re-fridge keep it in a cool dark spot. Darks keep in a cool dry spot and they will be fine.

Buy a used fridge and be done with it...I have had a "beer fridge" for 25 years in my garage. Once you get one, you'll kick yourself for waiting so long! Cheers!

 

Well,.... It depends.

You've heard from others a general rule, cold all the time is better than not. It slows down the aging of the beer. But that said there no need to obsess about it. A few cycles of moving between cool and warm won't hurt your beer so long as there's no direct sunlight (as someone already pointed out). Storage should always be in a cool dark place. My long term storage is in the basement which is never as warm as the rest of the house (45-65 depending on the season) and the beer never leaves the case until its moved to the kitchen fridge.

BTW, living in PA I buy most of my beer a case at a time (most retailers here sell by case only and bottle shops tend to be pretty pricy) and often go for a month or so without buying more beer. I find that a month or two in the basement where it is mostly cool and dark isn't a problem for most beers I buy fresh. I try to keep a lot of variety in what I buy so that a few of the bottles of beers with a much longer shelf life (e.g., stouts, BSDAs, etc. may spend up to 2 years keeping each other company while the shorter lived beers (e.g., SNPA, Bell's Two Hearted, Prima Pils) come and go within that two years.

 

Fridge is the worst place to store/cellar you beers in for long periods of time. If you don't have a real cellar/basement. Keep bottles in a box and in a darkest closet in your house. And why would you keep all your beer cold? Unless you like rusty caps. The only beers you should keep in a fridge that you plan on drinking soon.

 

Your rule should ONLY apply to Pale Ale, IPA and DIPA. And anything else that's HOPPY.

 

That is all true...I drink a lot of beer so my fridge is always full. I also keep beer in my basement "cellar".

Hoppy beers do last longer in the fridge though.

 

I don't drink hoppy beer but I keep all of my stuff in a dark closet that stays around 65 degrees as it's in the basement. I don't put anything in the fridge until I'm getting ready to drink it unless it's just a casual six pack purchase.

I'm sure some people will scoff, but I've never had any issues with anything that I've stored in this manner.

 

Did you read the original post?

 

This guy disagrees:

Both AB and MC typically give a shelf life of around 120 days (17 weeks for MC) for the majority of their domestically-brewed beers - some of the least hoppy beers in the world. 3-4 months was long the industry standard in the US (although some brewers went with 2 months).

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I no more want a stale pilsner, bock, Vienna lager, brown ale, golden ale, etc., than a stale IPA. This modern old wive's beer geek's tale that the only negative effects that age and storage conditions have on beer is on the hopping, would be kinda amusing if it wasn't so widespread.

 

This isn't a notion I've ever heard before.

You should keep any beer that you want to be as close to the original, bottled flavors when you drink it in the fridge. Cold slows down ALL chemical interaction, which, as @jesskidden notes via Ken Grossman, slows down all changes in flavor within a given beer.

Can you expand on the idea that keeping beer in the fridge over a long period of time will cause rusty caps? That's not an idea I'm familiar with, and it seems counterintuitive, since the refrigeration process dries the air out. Not sure where the moisture that would be needed to cause rust would come from.

 

So basically:
Heat changes beer. Store it accordingly.

 

I think a lot of people storing beer in the fridge will keep it on its side which is terrible right from the get go. There are other factors to consider with sharing a fridge like if there are a lot of high moisture things like cheese and fruit stored along side. Most people don't have a cellar and I constantly encourage my friend who uses his refrigerator is get paper bags to throw over your beer you want to age since constant bright light exposure is bad. If you're going to use a refrigerator also put your beer in the way back where it won't get moved around. If you have a shaky fridge, just avoid it altogether.

 

I keep my beer fridges (yes, plural) between 45 and 50 degrees. All the beers are stored upright and most are wax sealed. No moisture of note to cause rust.

Nothing wrong with any of that...

 

"A lot"? I'd like to see the stats on that - I've seldom seen it, but, yeah - don't do that. Although with cans, it's probably not much of a factor for beers one is storing for short periods before drinking fresh rather cellaring, as the OP states.

Why?

"Constant...exposure" to light? Every refrigerator I've ever seen has an automatic jam switch that turns the light out when the door is closed (i.e., the vast percentage of the time). And most home refrigerator lights are incandescent bulbs - which do not emit much of the wavelength that cause beer to become light struck. Sunlight and florescent light are the worst for beer.

But the OP isn't aging his beer.

 

But have you ever got inside a fridge to test this theory?

 

I thought about it, but I saw that episode of Lassie where Timmy got stuck inside that old Kelvinator out at the town dump:

"Go get help, Girl! I'm hot and dizzy and it's gettin' hard to breaaaaaa...."