Beer should be kept cool because?

This is a tough one :/

 

arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...so complicated a question it is.

Why can't it be a "YES" or "NO" question to give us a 50/50 chance????

 

Beer should it kept cool because it tastes better warm? That's worse than a Jedi mind trick.

 

A is false. Sunlight produces skunk, not warmth.
B is true...yeast is a living organism.
C is subjective.
D is subjective and relative.

 

I'm gonna have to go with option C here. Obviously, beer should be kept cool because it tastes better warm! Taste is so freakin' overrated.

 

Because keeping it cold and at a consistent temperature is best for its stability and shelf life...

Big ups to the state of Florida and its education system !

 

First of all, the cold/warm transition of beer is a total myth, as is "skunking" from the same process. Unless you are talking about an extreme transition to upper 90's the beer will undergo no detrimental effect. Cooler temperatures do reduce hop deterioration better, but if you are drinking them fresh(<3 months by most standards) there will be no detrimental effect. As for long storage of beer, storing at 75 vs 55 will speed up the aging/maillard reactions in the beer. Not so bad with darker beers since I find a lot of nice complexities come out of it in barleywine and the like, but with paler imperial beers like tripel it causes increased sweetness over time which is a very unwelcome characteristic in the style for me. I always like a fresh tripel, while a nicely aged Dubbel or quad will always hit the spot as long as there is no oxidation.

 

Cold beer is better beer.

 

Because of the laws of thermodynamics?

 

Oh wait! I get it! It's not a poll it's a story!
Beer should be kept cool because you never know, it might be a warm day and a skunk could just pop up and start attacking! Thank God I had those cool beers to help me keep my cool, so anyways, I was fending off that skunk with the warm beers that weren't cooled and I got the better of that dastardly critter with live fire of the warm beer. "Hows that taste" I yelled at the enraged skunk as I popped him in the eye with a live one. "Better?" I knew I had him beat with my aim and linguistic skills. Nothing works better than live warm beer!
After the skunk massacre I got to wondering how they handle it in Europe, them having no refrigerators and no skunks. And that's all the news from Florida folks, have a nice day!

 

because craft beer is living food, and food spoils if it gets warm

 

Warmer temperatures will accelerate any staling/oxidation that is bound to occur; cold beer is much more stable as a result. Geez- you don't want one going off in your hand, do you ?!!

 

F: that means it's always ready to drink at a moment's notice.

 

Plus it tastes better. You don't want to drink a beer that has warmed to room temp of lets say 72 degrees. Start with it cold then bring it to cellar temp by waiting a few minutes before you open it.

 

My rooms are never that warm- I'd have to microwave it to get to that temp . I agree with the overall point, though.

I was more or less thinking about storage, but when it comes to serving I keep my beer 46-48F and then let it warm only if it needs to.

 

We've done an extensive amount of research into what happens to beer at warmer temperatures as it ages. In fact, we caught some flak from wholesalers because late last year we required all of our wholesaler and distributor partners to install smart temperature gauges on pallets of our beer in their warehouses to ensure they are being stored at an appropriate temperature and cancelled orders to wholesalers that did not comply.

Here is a portion of paper that Dr. Charlie Bamforth from UC Davis published a while back about the correlation of temperature to beer staling:

"Temperature
Apart from oxygen levels, the single most important factor impacting the shelf life of
beer is heat. The accelerated ageing regimes described earlier speak to the relevance of
Arrhenius. Observation that the rate of a chemical reaction increases 2 to 3 fold for each
10oC increase in temperature. Thus a beer that develops clear stale character after around
100 days at 20oC, will have aged in around a month at 30oC or a day at 60oC. Equally, the shelf life will be enormously increased in refrigerated beer. It is important to stress that the nature as well as the extent of flavour change differs depending on temperature, presumably because of different rates at which the various reactions occur. Thus Walters et al (1997b) found that raising the temperature from 0oC through 25oC to 40oC had a disproportionate effect on the loss of iso-α-acids from beer and on the levels of furfural developed."

Links are mine, by-way of further explanation.

In short, beer should be kept cool because it will store better and preserve the intended flavors of the finished beer for a longer period of time.

Also, skunking or "light strike" is caused by ultraviolet radiation converting isohumulones (hop compounds) into 3-methylbut-2-ene-1-thiol. Light, not heat, causes skunking.

-Bill

 

A - only if it is exposed to light.
B - if it has yeast, yes, filtered no.
C - different beers have different temps for best flavor.
D - yeah, Germany is so technologically backwards (search for Carl von Linde, see what he invented).