Right now, I have some beer lagering in a chest freezer set at about 34 F. But, as winter approaches (slowly), I’m thinking of pulling the beer out of the freezer and just letting it lager in my garage. I need the freezer to be a freezer again.
So, would variations in lagering temperature have a detrimental impact on finished beer? The garage has not yet gotten cold enough to freeze inside although it certainly might if the temperature really drops. But, in general I’d say it’s likely to stay in the mid-30’s with some swings depending on daytime temps.
Will these swings have a negative impact on the beer?
If a keg froze, is this a bad thing? I don’t think that they would get to the point of freezing solid, probably just get slushy and if they were going to get any colder, they could be put in the basement for a few days until the cold snap passes.
It’s pretty warm right now so I’m gonna try to get another 10 gal batch of lager made tomorrow while the garage is still in the 50’s during the day but soon I expect winter to finally arrive and lager brewing will end until spring. But, my basement will be sitting at about 65F so ales will continue as usual.
I ferment and lager in my garage and pole barn. My garage is attached and and never gets below 48 degrees. I control fermentation temps by raising and lowering windows. I’ll stick a keg out in my pole barn and forget about it for a couple months or till the weather gets warm. I am very happy with the quality of my lagers. Last year I fermented a lager with WLP 830 at 60 degrees and noticed no off flavors. I say your good to go.
I’m thinking how cool it would be to put linear drive motors on your garage windows and use a Johnson controller to open and close your windows automatically.
