Storing beer and wine thru winter.

[spudbasher]

It looks like by the time the colder weather returns I will have a healthy amount of both beer and wine bottled ,pressure barrelled and demi-johned.
My cubby hole brewery is more or less full now already , so I only have the shed ,which is little more than a wooden hut ,perched on the edge of a windswept hill.
Last winter everything liquid in it froze solid, (as well as my onions). :shock: I wasnt storing beer/wine then tho.
We are on the edge of the pennines so it can get harsh here, so I was wondering if anyone successfully stores wine/beer outside in sub zero temps.

Does the alchohol content act as antifreeze or should I insulate in some way?
cheers ,Spud.

 

[battwave]

I keep beer and wine in brick outbuildings, but don't have the extremes that you suffer Spudbasher. I save the bubble wrap that things come packaged in and drape this over and around my crates.

That said, my wine rack wasn't insulated, and I didn't have any problems. As for the antifreeze effect, anyone who's tried feeeze distillation, will know that ice crystals happily form in the alchoholic solution, presumably with some associated expansion of the mass, albeit possibly absorbed by compression of the gas space in the bottle (which can't happen so easily with a solid ice mass).

Probably not an answer, but hopefully some useful rambling to add to your own considerations?

 

[Dunfie]

I keep my beer in the garage. I've never had a problem before but this winter it got so cold that I experienced this:

 

[dennisking]

I keep my beer in the garage. I've never had a problem before but this winter it got so cold that I experienced this:

:shock: Photos like that should be given an X rating

 

[otuatail]

But beer and wine would not freeze because of the alcohol would it. Anti freeze for cars doesn’t.

 

[Cussword]

There is only a percentage of alcohol in the bottles. To put it simply, the majority of it is water, & that freezes

 

[spudbasher]

Thanks chaps, Dunfie`s photos say it all, I might put a few beers and wine bottles WELL wrapped up in the shed ,if we have another artic winter that will test em.
Was tempted to store loads but those pics are heartbreaking.
cheers Spud.

 

[Aleman]

But beer and wine would not freeze because of the alcohol would it. Anti freeze for cars doesn’t.

The picture sort of proves that beer and wine will freeze if the temperatures are cold enough

 

[luckyeddie]

But beer and wine would not freeze because of the alcohol would it. Anti freeze for cars doesn’t.

Nada.

It starts a bit below zero but it most certainly does freeze - and not all at once, and it isn't just the water component that freezes first but a mix (the 'D' word that shall remain unsaid here would otherwise be redundant)

 

[BigYin]

I had a king keg full of beer out in my shed through our month long sub zero winter period, where we had 3 to 4 feet of snow clogging up the place. It took almost 2 weeks before there was obviously ice in it, at which point I just left it there until the weather crawled back up above zero, and after another few weeks the beer had defrosted happily and was no worse for it at all :drink:

I don't store any bottled beer out there though, which is maybe just as well, or they may have faced the same fate as Dunc's.... :shock: