A new **** up.....

[Jordang]

Not sure about all the alcohol dropping to the bottom tbh.

It definitely did… both times I needed to mix it back in. First time it happened I thought I’d knackered me saison, but a shake about and it was back to a nice beer again.

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

It definitely did… both times I needed to mix it back in. First time it happened I thought I’d knackered me saison, but a shake about and it was back to a nice beer again.

Erm… well for one thing, alcohol is less dense than water.
But alcohol is more dense than ice (for example, ice cubes float in whisky). So perhaps some of the water was still frozen, and shaking the keg helped to melt it ?

 

[RoomWithABrew]

The Brewdog recipe uses sequential freezing to get the alcohol content up in Tactical Nuclear Penguin. Freeze the beer, decant the liquid from the bottom, refreeze that liquid and repeat until it gets to a syrupy bitter beer with about 32 % alcohol if memory serves me.
I think you start with a lot of beer and end up with a little ( big ) beer!

 

[Agentgonzo]

But alcohol is more dense than ice (for example, ice cubes float in whisky).

No it isn't.
Ice: 917 kg/m³
Alcohol: 789 kg/m³

But whisky isn't 100% alcohol. So the alcohol/water mix will still be more dense than ice (even at high alcohol ratios like whisky, which is normally 35-55% ABC).

Thus any ice that forms in your keg will form at the top, leaving a more concentrated beer (ethanol/water mix) at the bottom of the keg

 

[gavp1979]

Are you sure that it is the keg that is frozen? when I first got kegs I thought I had frozen the keg but it was actually the small bit of beer in the line that had frozen so nothing was coming out of the taps

 

[Brewnaldo]

Are you sure that it is the keg that is frozen? when I first got kegs I thought I had frozen the keg but it was actually the small bit of beer in the line that had frozen so nothing was coming out of the taps

Oh yes. The whole lot

 

[gavp1979]

Oh yes. The whole lot

Impressive hopefully no damage done though other than you can't drink it for a few days

 

[Brewnaldo]

Impressive hopefully no damage done though other than you can't drink it for a few days

It's now fully, or almost fully defrosted so I have turned the fridge back on and will monitor performance in the coming days