I received a shipment from Tavour today where a good number of the beers froze, with several still solid or at least slushy sounding. Some cans I am amazed have not exploded, but at least a couple did indeed break. I've read that sometimes this is ok for beer to freeze, but also that it can impact overall quality while still being drinkable. 95% as good, 90%; whatever it is, I should have received 100% quality beer. Even if it seems ok once opened, I have no way of knowing if I am getting the full product quality for most of these now. Which brings me to my questions. Is there an ABV that I should feel confident was likely not frozen? If a beer is corked or capped, could it have forced carbonation out even if it did not freeze?
Sorry to hear but IME there’s no way a beer that has frozen; whether because of rough winter conditions or then dumbass me “forgetting” them in the freezer could be sipped afterwards the way they originally taste. You can wait until they unfreeze but I can’t assure you they’re going to be what they were supposed to be.
Tavour customer service is pretty good, usually. You can send them an email and see how they react. You may want to specify which beers you think are in the worst condition (unless it's all of them). I've had this issue before (although not with Tavour) and unless the cans exploded, I thought the beers were fine.
I've had beer freeze by accident and then I put them into the fridge to thaw slowly. Didn't seem to suffer any harm. YMMV.
I was looking into this when I had my latest crate ship. I was checking the temperature to see how much cushion I had before my 14% barleywines were going to start freezing. They made it in just fine
It's been -15 to -25 overnight the past 3-4 days here in WI. For an experiment, I left a 7% oatmeal stout out in the garage fridge to see what would happen. It got down to 0 according to my thermometer in the fridge and the beer has yet to freeze or even look like slush (it's in a bottle). It'll probably turn to slush the second I open it, but I found it very interesting it hasn't frozen over. At least I took all the good beer out. Put it all back in tonight since we're finally gonna get warmer. And I need cold beer for tomorrow after work!
Ask for a refund. Get the credit card to refund you if they refuse. Someone on here did an experiment (recorded/reported in the trade portion of the site) on this very subject. I want to say that even at just 10% when left in 15ish degree weather for 2 days there was no freezing of the beer. That said, I haven’t read through that since probably 2018-2019. It’s been awhile. I could be misremembering. Historically, people tried to not ship saisons until spring, and hops not until there was a dethaw just to guard against freezing. Anything high ABV was fair game, but much like avoiding weekends in summer to guard against being marooned in a hot warehouse, people avoid shipping over the weekend in winter to guard against freezing. The only problem is tavour is, well, not thoughtful and also a bit slow.
I've had a bottle of Smirnoff freeze in a freezer once. It was a rented cabin and the fridge was turned off. So we cranked it to the max and next time we checked the vodka it was frozen solid. I guess it was a powerful piece of machinery. (I just googled that Vodka will freeze at -17F, my freezer's normal temperature is set to 0F).
regular - neither were overproof, but seeing slushy liquor suggested that inhabiting this part of the world was questionable. Good wood stove solved that problem quickly, though.
I’m surprised Tavour wouldn’t have a disclaimer stating they can’t control the weather and that the consumer should check their weather before ordering.
Yeah, this one seems to be on the buyer, not on the seller (unless of course they delivered the item outside of the original estimated delivery time). To the OP...I say you thaw them out and give them a taste. Report back your thoughts in this thread and/or read the reviews on the beer to see if there noticeable differences.
