Hello fellow beer geeks! Today I thought I’d share a question I recently received via email:

I have a bottle of beer from Stone B.C. that was being cellared until I put it in my fridge about 3 months ago. I understand the bottle fermenting seizes or slows down once placed in the fridge.

My question is can I take it out of the fridge to recellar it or is that it?

A friend of mine is offering me a sweet deal for a trade. He was a bit dismayed when I told him that the brew was in my fridge.

Any insight would be well appreciated.

He also mentioned how he had already asked this question to six of his beer-drinking friends and recieved six different answers!

I told him that I would be most concerned if the beer was bottle-conditioned (sounds like it was) and still fairly young. Live yeast do not tolerate big swings in temperature very well, and I would be concerned with killing them all off if I just yanked such a beer out of the fridge. Otherwise, if the beer was older or not bottle-conditioned, I wouldn’t worry too much about the change in temp.

I also told him that when he took the beer out of the fridge, he should do whatever he could to slow down the rise in temperature. I suggested that maybe he should put the beer in a bucket of cold water and let the whole thing gradually come up to cellar temperature. Hopefully the slower temperature rise would save the yeast.

I’d like to throw this out to all of my readers. Do you have any good advice for him? Have you ever experienced a similar situation?

 Jason

jason@brewbasement.com