Help defrosting my frozen brew please?

[Fappasaurus]

Part of me always knew I'd one day end up making one of these, "did I ruin my brew?!?!" posts, and here we are. Long and stupid me story short I've got a a rock hard cylinder of BeirMunchers Guinness clone :smack: I brewed it for our ST. Pattys party and am kinda freaking out.

It wasn't in a keg or anything just a bucket, fermentation was already complete on it I was just kinda killing time till a keg opened up for it. Everything I looked up was talking about beer frozen in kegs so im not sure how I should go about Defrosting this since its in a bucket? What temperature do I defrost it at? Luckily I recently started kegging so that's one less thing to worry about but will it taste real off if I mix it up real well after defrosting it? I would'nt be so upset but we've got quite a few people coming over who were excited to try my homebrew Guinness....

Thanks a ton for any input, its awesome to a community to run to when you do something truly face-palm worthy :smack:

 

[Revvy]

I would just leave it at room temp and let it do it's thing....Seems obvious to me. I don't know why you would think it would be more so. You don't want to heat it to thaw it which could alter the taste of the beer. You could try a brew belt or electric blanket but only on low.

 

[StoneHands]

I'm not speaking from experience on this, but you have uncarbed, fully fermented (though frozen) beer in a bucket, correct? I'd leave it in the bucket undisturbed and let it fully thaw in there, rack to the keg and purge a few times and start carbonating. Racking it should get it mixed back up. Not sure what, if any, flavor difference you'll get after the freeze/thaw cycle.

 

[daksin]

You may be in for some trouble- freezing beer can blow up your yeast and give you some nasty flavors. I'd thaw it out as the others have said, but be sure to taste it before packaging. That's a flavor that's not going away.

 

[Fappasaurus]

Thanks a lot guys, for some reason I was thinking it might be best to let it super slowly thaw out at a colder temperature than just regular room temp not sure why I was thinking that though. I hadn't thought about that, that would suck if I exploded my yeasties. I'll post back with results in case anyone else is does something like this in the future. Thanks again for the advice.

 

[Revvy]

I wouldn't worry about blwing the yeast up and having off flavors or whatever that is, there's a little thing we call an eisenbock, or even freeze concentration off beers that happens all the time, and there's little mention if ever of any off flavors from the process.

 

[daksin]

I wouldn't worry about blwing the yeast up and having off flavors or whatever that is, there's a little thing we call an eisenbock, or even freeze concentration off beers that happens all the time, and there's little mention if ever of any off flavors from the process.

Eisbocks are usually lagered for a good long time before we eis them. Almost all of the yeast has dropped out by that point. It's pretty unusual to freeze an entire yeast cake.

Ever freeze a bottle of bottle-conditioned beer? You can see the yeast cake in the bottom gets stringy/slimy from lysis of the yeast by ice crystals. That's actually one of the recommended ways to replicate the burnt rubber flavors of autolysis when studying for tasting exams.

 

[Indytruks138]

I would thaw at cold temp, 40ish. I froze my whole keezer, someone pulled the temp probe out at a party. I put it back in, brought it to 40, and waited 3 days for the kegs to thaw. Shoudl work just the same in the bucket. Everything I read mentioned doing it at 40 so it thaws slowly. I have no science to back it up, but I thawed mine, re-carbed it up and there was no noticeable taste difference.

 

[Fappasaurus]

Thanks again for the information, I learned a few things from it now so I guess It was a good thing. When I opened up the bucket after defrosting, it smelled very alcoholic but from what I read that was to be expected after freezing and defrosting After transferring to a keg and taking a sample it I was really pleasantly surprised with the way it came out. Thanks!