How Frosty Temperatures Ruin Your Craft Beer

Whether you’re pulling it from your fridge or it’s sliding toward you at a bar, your beer is likely at a frosty 38 degrees.

For craft beer lovers, that’s a problem.

Most mass-produced beer is ideally enjoyed at such a cold temperature because it hides the taste of the chemicals that make the beer so inexpensive.

Craft beers are generally served better in the low- to mid-40s temperature range with lambics and stouts being more palatable up into the high 50s. Drinking these beers any colder numbs the taste buds to the reasons you’re spending more on the pint.

Ray Daniels, founder of the Cicerone beer education program and board member at the Siebel Institute of Technology, used to impatiently microwave his beer.

“Ten seconds takes that frosty edge off,” Daniels told the Chicago Tribune, though he now simply wraps his hands around a beer prior to drinking it.

“So much of our sense of taste is in the sense of smell. In order to stimulate the olfactory nerves, you have to have volatile compounds enter the nasal passage and into the throat. If beer is too cold, it will release less aromatics.” – Ray Daniels

Don’t blame your bartender just yet; tap systems’ standardized 38-degree temperatures are still ideal for keeping beer fresh and keeping foam issues at bay.

Just drink a little slower or find a microwave.

H/t & picthx Chicago Tribune