“Frost brewed” beer isn’t anything special, that’s how beer is made

June 11th, 2009 | by Carleton

Almost every macro-brewery has at one point or another laid claim to being the coldest brew at the store or on tap. We’ve all seen in countless TV commercials and Super Bowl spots where advertisers victoriously proclaim that their beer is always Ice Brewed or Cold Brewed or Frost Brewed or Glacier Brewed or some-other-cold-sounding-word brewed.

Coors Light with their recent “Our beer tastes like licking the Rockies” advertising shtick, is particularly guilty of this, just take a look at this ad featuring former NFL coach Bill Parcells. (Starts around the :30 mark)

Coors Light Cold Activated Bottle

Cold Activated Bottles. Provided by MillerCoors LLC

34 degrees sounds pretty cold, right? Pretty impressive maybe? Let’s do some fact checking with John Palmer, author of the book How to Brew, a guide to home brewing. 34 degrees happens to be the exact temperature Palmer recommends for making lager in your kitchen. So way to go MillerCoors, you’ve managed to follow directions from a recipe and do something anyone with an old ice box and a couple of bags of ice can accomplish. Brilliant!

Beer companies are usually selling the message of Ice Cold Beer because they know it appeals to the consumers sense of refreshment. They are also willing to assume that the average American does not know how beer is made, much less what a hop is (a topic for a much larger post down the road).

Beeriety is here to change some of these myths by providing more information about beer, beer culture and homebrewing to the everyday drinker.

Tags: , , ,

Categories: Beer Ad Myths, General

  • http://www.ericdgreene.com/ Eric

    First

  • http://here.am here

    It's lonely at the top, eh?

  • http://real-url.org/twitted.php?id=2137065884 Twitted by susiea

    [...] This post was Twitted by susiea – Real-url.org [...]

  • http://www.wearenotmartha.com/ Sues

    Yay! Congrats, guys :) I can't wait to learn more about beer… and have some parties!!

  • Mike

    But Miller also puts hops in their beer at THREE DIFFERENT TIMES during brewing! What a completely standard idea!

  • http://ohryankelley.com ohryankelley

    That's a topic for another post!

  • Monique

    Having just sat down at my computer after seeing a Coors commercial and deciding once and for all to figure out what the hell 'frost brewed' means anyway, I'm delighted to see that the fifth google search result turned up this blog.
    Clearly, I did this the long way.
    Good work, Carleton.

  • Monique

    Having just sat down at my computer after seeing a Coors commercial and deciding once and for all to figure out what the hell 'frost brewed' means anyway, I'm delighted to see that the fifth google search result turned up this blog.
    Clearly, I did this the long way.
    Good work, Carleton.

  • http://home-brewer.info/?p=387 “Frost brewed” beer isn't anything special, that's how beer is …

    [...] by admin on June 11, 2009 Let’s do some fact checking with John Palmer, author of the book How to Brew , a guide to home brewing . 34 degrees happens to be the exact temperature Palmer recommends for making lager in your kitchen. So way to go MillerCoors, … Excerpt from: “Frost brewed” beer isn't anything special, that's how beer is … [...]

  • http://blog.beeriety.com/2009/10/01/five-things-you-didn%e2%80%99t-know-about-your-beer/ Five Things You Didn’t Know About Your Beer – Beeriety

    [...] different brewers over the years have bragged about how cold their beer is brewed. As we’ve pointed out before though, all lagers are brewed cold, that’s just how lager beer is made, so bragging about it in [...]

  • Joex444

    Palmer recommends lagering the beer at 34F. The actual fermentation temperature where the wort is converted to beer would be 48-58F, see Wyeast’s American Lager (2035). Yeast work very slowly at 34F and would never finish a fermentation.

  • No

    34 is too cold

blog comments powered by Disqus

Technorati Profile