Beer Forum

Great show!

I share a house and have limited storage space and the space is on the warmer side (72-75°), so 2 weeks ago I decided to store my IPA in the garage. The temperature range in the garage is between 48-56°. I tried a beer last night and it tastes great, except it barely has any carbonation. In hindsight, maybe I should of just kept the bottles in the house a couple weeks to get carbonated, then put them in the garage.

The questions are: should I bring the bottles in for a couple weeks to carbonate, then put them back out in the garage? Would it mess with the beer to have these roller-coaster temps? Should I just leave them out there and give them more time? And finally, what issues are associated with storing ales in a cold temperature range?

Any feedback would be appreciated!
Cheers,
Bob

At those temperatures there is no problem at all. Now if this was summertime and you were moving beers between 100°+ garage temps and refrigerator temps and back again, your beers would taste like Justin's carpet filtered porter.

Wayne

I highly doubt the beer at 56 degrees is going to carb. I typically leave the freshly bottled stuff in a room that stays around 70 degrees for the first 2 weeks, to get the yeast going again. And considering that this is an IPA, time is against you before the hops start to drop out of the flavor profile, so you want to get this beer carbed ASAP, so it is as fresh as possible. Bring them inside and stick it in a closet or something where the temp can stay around 70 ish.

Once my beer is carbed up, it goes in a dark corner of the basement where it stays pretty cool. I started doing it this way, because a few beers ago, I had one that never carbed up for over 3 weeks. I put it upstairs and it carbed up in about 2.5 weeks at 69-71 degrees. Your dealing with yeast that are tired and the beer has a decent amount of alchohol in it already, so you have a few things working against you. Give it a little warmer environment, and it will be much happier. Once you bring it back up to 70ish, give each bottle a little flip to get the yeast back in suspention just to kick start it a bit.

Had the same thing happen to me. I brought mine upstairs, gave each bottle a gentle flip up and down to get the yeast back in suspension and left in my half bathroom for a week. Then I moved them back to the basement for storage and drinking

What I did is keep my bottles between 66-70 F for 3 weeks. Warmer the better. If they're below 60F, it's hard to carbonate. I'd move them into a warmer room for 3-4 weeks and that should help. It may take more, but it'll be worth the time instead of repitching 1/2 a vial and worrying about overcarbonating the beer. Just my thoughts and experiments. Cheers.
J

as a side note, next time you could bottle condition w/ a lager yeast, if you have nowhere to put them in the house. it will take longer, but it'd getcha there in the garage.