Storing alcohol in the car in winter - when is it too cold?

Hi,

I sometimes don't go home to pick stuff up due to distance and logistics. This means stuff is kept in the car perhaps longer than desired. Alternately, sometimes using my trunk as a chiller works out fine when I cannot commit space in my refrigerator.

For instance, I leave in the morning with a bottle of champagne. Can it stay in the car or would it get slushy if average temps are in the 20's?

Next week, I have a program involving beer tasting. I cannot commit to storing two cases in my refrigerator overnight. If the program is at 10:00 am, will they be cold enough if I get them to the car by 7:00 am? I recall Heineken includes on their label ideal temperature for serving, which suggests beer can get too cold.

Since I am on a roll, if you take a higher alcohol content drink like vodka, which sometimes people encase in a jacket of ice. I guess I am ok unless temps really drop.

If there is a rule of thumb on temperatures one can leave alcohol of various concentrations outside or shouldn't, please advise.

Regards,

You're pretty much always safe with hard spirits. They don't freeze. The ABV is too high for that.

You have to be super careful with beer, though. If it gets too cold, it can freeze and burst. Ditto for wine, cider and the like. They contain a lot of water and water expands when it freezes. A few hours in the mild cold probably won't destroy it, though.

I'm not sure how cold beer will get if you store it for 3 hours in your trunk. It really depends on its staring temperature, how cold it is outside and how heated/insulated your trunk is . . . and how cold you like your beer, which is a whole other matter.

=R=

http://van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=1640 has a nice chart.
Obviously 0% alcohol = 32F freezing point.
10% -> 25F
20% -> 15F
so wine and champagne are likely to freeze only below about 22F... and the page notes that ice crystals will freeze out, leaving a higher-alcohol content which freezes at an even lower temp. Another poster opines though that the expansion of the freezing water portion forced the cork out.

I've successfully kept beer in my trunk overnight, even when the overnight low temps were in the teens. I'm guessing the closed trunk provides some insulation, so the trunk doesn't get quite as cold as the air temp outside.

They may not get cold enough in the trunk in 3 hours, but if you put them outside with the cases open so some air can flow through the bottles they should be fine in 1-2 hours (assuming they start at room temp). At that point put them in the trunk.

I've successfully kept beer in a trunk overnight, but I've also unsuccessfully kept beer in the trunk overnight, so I'd be a little wary of leaving them in there for 10+ hours.

ronnie_suburban wrote:You're pretty much always safe with hard spirits. They don't freeze. The ABV is too high for that.

I always though the same thing but on some crazy cold nights in N Wisconsin, the bottle of tequila has frozen (not solid) when left in the travel bag of my snowmobile, I was shocked the first time I saw this. Temps were -30F, not windchill mind you, the actual temp Only machines that would start were the snowmobiles, the cars didn't even begin to turn over, we had to start charcoal in aluminum pans, then slide under the engine blocks to thaw them out.

Sweet Willie wrote:

ronnie_suburban wrote:You're pretty much always safe with hard spirits. They don't freeze. The ABV is too high for that.

I always though the same thing but on some crazy cold nights in N Wisconsin, the bottle of tequila has frozen (not solid) when left in the travel bag of my snowmobile,

Makes sense given the chart I linked to -- at -30, anything under 110 proof should freeze.

JoelF wrote:

Sweet Willie wrote:

ronnie_suburban wrote:You're pretty much always safe with hard spirits. They don't freeze. The ABV is too high for that.

I always though the same thing but on some crazy cold nights in N Wisconsin, the bottle of tequila has frozen (not solid) when left in the travel bag of my snowmobile,

Makes sense given the chart I linked to -- at -30, anything under 110 proof should freeze.

Fascinating. Very cool (no pun intended). If it gets to that temp here, we'll have a lot more to worry about than whether liquor stored outside overnight is going to freeze! Yikes!

=R=

With your wine, you should be able to produce some nice tartaric crystals.

JoelF wrote:http://van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=1640 has a nice chart.
Obviously 0% alcohol = 32F freezing point.
10% -> 25F
20% -> 15F
so wine and champagne are likely to freeze only below about 22F... and the page notes that ice crystals will freeze out, leaving a higher-alcohol content which freezes at an even lower temp. Another poster opines though that the expansion of the freezing water portion forced the cork out.

Tomorrow will have a high of 22 degrees. If I put boxed champagne/cava into the car around 9:30 am, it will take time to lower the temperature. I could insulate it a bit more by throwing a blanket over it. I expect it may exit the car sometime around 5:00 pm. The same blanket may then try to keep it cold. Since the car will be periodically driven, hopefully this will agitate and keep ice crystals from forming.

Tim - I hope not to get tartaric crystals, I know I filter them out when I make grape juice. I just looked to find Tartaric Crystals in Wine: the "Wine Diamonds" of Quality. Who knew!

Regards,

If you have any of the insulated food bags, those should keep them from freezing as well. I have a nice big one if ur in the city at all today or tomorrow.

I know we have a non-insulated, non-heated attached garage, and we always use as a beer/wine cooler-2nd frig in the winter.
I have never had anything freeze, but I keep the pop in the cardboard sleeves along the wall that is shared with the house.

The beer warning about bursting is a good one. Also be aware that extremely cold but not yet frozen-through beer, when opened, can have a tendency to gush a slushy mix wildly out of the container. Um, a friend told me, yeah that's it.

I always carry a cooler in my trunk. The cooler allows me to keep cold food cold during the summer months as most of my purchases seem to be 50+ miles away. It also keep my produce in good shape, even in subzero weather.

Just as a data point - on Saturday night we left a few unopened beers (Domaine DuPage, Great Lakes Dortmunder, and some cans of Sierra Nevada) out for the night and they all burst. They probably went outside between 2-3 AM and were burst or popped by noon the next day. We also had a lot of beers outside from late afternoon until midnight, and while some starting slushing up around 11 or midnight they made it through OK.

ronnie_suburban wrote:
Fascinating. Very cool (no pun intended). If it gets to that temp here, we'll have a lot more to worry about than whether liquor stored outside overnight is going to freeze! Yikes!

=R=

Yep. I've had vodka begin to freeze (starts to slush up) in particularly cold freezers. Only need about -10F for that at 40% ABV, and a home freezer can get that low (although typically they're around 0F).

Hi,

Saturday morning, I found I had to go home later to collect a family member. I never had to fully test keeping sparkling wine in the trunk all day.

I did call home around 2:30 pm asking that the wine go from the dining room to the front enclosed porch. Around 4:00 pm, these bottles were transferred to the car. They were unloaded around 6:15 pm.

I never did drink any, though where I sat everyone thought it was cold enough.

Rene G did suggest having a bottle of the same size filled with water sitting with the wine. If the water was slushy or frozen, then I had some indicator of what may be happening with the wine. I didn't get around to testing this, because of finding a similar bottle in my house is almost no chance.

Regards,