As I said in another post, I am attempting to use a side-by-side to serve from the fridge side and lager in the freezer side. I pretty much have the temps stabilized at 32°F on the freezer side (empty) and 39°F on the serving side with one partial and one full keg and various bottles of commercial beer in it.
The problem with this design is the temps stabilize between the two sides regardless of how much I fiddle with the temp control due to the trap door. I plan to get another temp controller but until then I am going to try to lager the Dunkle that is currently in my ferm chamber in the freezer side.
I’ve always heard to lager at near freezing temps. I assume that is the freezing temp of the beer and not 32°F - the commonly used temp for “freezing” because water starts freezing at 32°F. I’ve found on the interweb that most beers start to freeze at 27°-28° F. I also found “the freezing point (°C) of beer = (-0.42 × A) + (0.04 × E) + 0.2, where A is the percent of alcohol content by weight, and E is the original gravity of the wort (°Plato). Therefore, each 1% increase in alcohol content lowers the freezing point by 0.42° C and each increase in gravity of 1° Plato raises it by 0.04°C. Thus, no beer will freeze at -1°C, and products at higher alcohol concentrations (including high-gravity brews prior to dilution) will withstand even lower temperatures.”
But I’d like to ask the forum: in your experience what temp does beer freeze?
Pressure (may) also affects the freezing temperature. Get a bottle of beer at just the right too cold temp. and it will be all liquid until you pop the top. Then a plug will freeze in the neck. I would guess that altitude would also affect freezing temp. in your fermentation chamber.
Edit: On second thought the effect may be due to a drop in temp. due to a drop in pressure. Anyway, it’s aggravating on a hot day to have to wait for the plug to thaw. Good news is…the beer is really cold. 8)
I’ve briefly chilled bottled beer well below 26 without it freezing… then when you tap the bottle the whole lot freezes in an instant. Caused by the liquid supercooling, ie cooling below freezing point but without ice crystals forming. I’m not sure how cold it got - probably only a few degrees below freezing. You can supercool pure water to -50 without it turning to ice. Not sure about beer though.
When we go ice fishing, we try to bring ice beer like Icehouse, as it does not freeze so quickly. Although it is getting harder and harder to find ice beers, the ice beer craze of the 1990s being long over.
Ice beer is to megaswill as eisbock is to bock. Ice beer is made by taking, say, budweiser, partially freezing it, and racking it off the ice crystals. As it is more of a gimmick that eisbock, only a small amount of ice is left behind. Most ice beers were around 6% abv vs. 5% for typical megaswill.
Gee, Denny, it sounds like you missed the 1990s ice beer craze. It was wildly popular in Montana. Now, except for Icehouse, they have all disappeared.
have you seen someone be able to accomplish this? not saying you can’t, just surprised that you’d be able to get a freezer to hold that high while keeping the fridge at 39. IIRC, my old side x side freezer temp was right at 0df and my new fridge top/bottom has the freezer at slightly below zero.
