My friend is getting into home-brewing, which led us to wonder what the hell Coors is talking about when they say that Coors beer is “frost brewed.”
Now I know it’s probably mostly marketing (“It’s from the mountains! It’ll be cold and refreshing! Frosty, baby!”) but a browse of their site shows that they’re pretty hard-core about keeping the beer cold at all times:
The yeast my friend uses has to be between 64F and 76F to do its thing. When Coors says “cold” do they mean around 64F? Do they have special yeast that stays alive at colder temps? Do they have a completely different process?
If your friend is a homebrewer chances are good that he makes ales. Coors and company primarily make lagers. Lagers are done at lower tempertures and use varieties of yeast designed/bred for the cooler fermentation conditions.
What Grey said. Ales are top fermented and are usually matured at about room temp. while lagers are bottom fermented and matured at lower temperatures. All beer is still brewed at boiling temperature though, so “frost brewed” is still a misnomer. They are probably talking about the fact that they cold filter instead of heat pasteurize. It is a step up from their “coldest tasting beer” campaign though.
Coors isn’t pasteurized, so it spoils easily at room temperature. “Frost-brewed” is part-hype, part truth. Because they use a lager yeast formulated to work at extremely cold temps, they avoid the development of anything remotely resembling “flavor” in their beer. All you get is hops and malt…no yeast influence at all. Good if you like that sort of thing. Bad if you want your beer to actually taste like beer.
(Full disclosure: I grew up on Coors, and still drink Silver Bullets on a hot summer day. I also brew my own beer, for days when it is appropriate.)
As x-ray pointed out, you have to boil the wort during the brewing process. That makes it pretty difficult to keep it cold during brewing. I don’t know the specific strain of lager yeast that they use, but based on my experience with other lager yeasts, I’d guess they have to ferment in the 40 to 50 degree range. “Frost” implies at or below freezing point, and you can’t ferment an ice cube.
Yes, of course they keep it cold, but this whole “frost” thing is just misleading advertising.
Wrong! Or at least, partially wrong. Malt+Hops+Yeast=Flavor. I can brew the same malt bill, with the same hopping schedule, and get completely different tasting beers based on the yeast strain and fermentation temperature I use.
Besides, Coors and Bud and Miller, et al, use so many adjuncts in their beers that “malt” is a minor component of the flavor profile.
silenus, I realize you need all three to make a beer. You stated that Coors was all hops and malt with no yeast influence at all and based that as your reason for it having little taste. That’s ridiculous. There is no way yeast is more responsible than the amounts and types of malts and hops used for its weak flavor.
The water can make quite a difference, too. I brewed the same recipe using bottled water for one batch and my own well water for another, and you could definitely tell the difference. Minerals in the water that don’t affect the taste of the water much can have a significant affect on how the yeast does its job.
Some hardcore homebrewers actually go to the length of artificially altering the ph levels of their water to match the water to the beer type or even to the individual city water supply native to the beer they are trying to emulate. From memory, hard water is good for lagers and soft for ales and stouts. For the average brewer though, municipal water is fine.
As for the “frost brewing” thing, maybe they are refering to cold filtering or ice filtering. This technique has traditionally been used to artificially boost the alcohol levels slightly - the beer is chilled until ice starts to form in it, then those small pieces of alcohol-free ice are scooped out. In practice, I think most modern ice filtered beers are produced that way just because it makes for effective advertising. These beers are aimed at the young male demographic, and I have found them to be somehow even more tasteless than the likes of Foster’s or Budweiser . This is no mean feat as brewing consistently bland beer is surprisingly difficult.
Another point is that for normal pasteurised mainstream beers, some people in the industry recommend that they be stored warm, and snap-chilled at the “Temprite” chiller hidden in the bar just below the taps. There is a move away from having the kegs sit in a coolroom, especially if the beer lines are long (which they often are) and the beer might be sitting in those a while - making it go cool - warm - cold (not good for flavour).
