Shipping Lambic: Difference between revisions

With the proliferation of beer trading and online lambic sales, an increasing amount of lambic is being shipped around the world, often in less-than-ideal temperature conditions. However, as shipping times are usually less than a month, the exposure to extreme temperatures is minimized, leading the primary concerns to be freezing and exposure to fairly extreme heat that can cause acute effects on the beer.

Lambic, at ~5% alcohol and ~0.75% residual sugars by weight (assuming an OG of 1.050 and an apparent attenuation of 85%) <ref name=Classic Beer Styles: Lambic>Jean-Xavier Guinard, Classic Beer Styles: Lambic, 1990 </ref><ref name=SYNTHESIS OF AROMA COMPONENTS>D. Van Oevelen, F. DE L'Escaille, and H. Verachtert, SYNTHESIS OF AROMA COMPONENTS DURING THE SPONTANEOUS FERMENTATION OF LAMBIC AND GUEUZE, J. Inst. Brew., 1976 </ref><ref name="Farmhouse Ales">Phil Markowski, Farmhouse Ales: Culture and Craftsmanship in the Belgian Tradition, 2004 </ref><ref name=Occurrence of sotolon>Caroline Scholtes, Sabrina Nizet, and Sonia Collin, Occurrence of sotolon, abhexon and theaspirane-derived molecules in Gueuze beers. Chemical similarities with ‘yellow wines’, J. Inst. Brew, Vol. 118, 2012 </ref> will freeze around -2 C/28° F [http://sites.chem.colostate.edu/diverdi/all_courses/CRC%20reference%20data/solubility%20of%20carbon%20dioxide%20in%20water.pdf]<ref name="CRC Handbook">W. M. Haynes, ed., CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, 1914-2017 </ref> (due to the high molar mass of any sugar compared to ethanol and the low concentrations of residual sugars in lambic, we can approximate lambic as just an ethanol-water mix). If the low temperature anywhere on the shipping path will not go below this temperature, the lambic will not freeze. If it does go below -2 C/28° F along the path, the lambic may still not freeze, as it will take prolonged exposure before the beer is cooled to the freezing point. Freezing a significant portion of the beer will take even longer, as the enthalpy of fusion for water is very high.

Any shipping where the temperature may go below freezing should be done at your peril, but if the average temperature is well above freezing or the time spent in the cold area is expected to be low, most lambic will likely survive the trip unscathed.

High temperatures may also be very detrimental to lambic, though the short period of exposure during shipping will reduce its impact. The most pressing concern is usually cork leakage and bottles exploding. The solubility of CO₂ in water goes down as temperature goes up, which can nearly double the pressure in the bottle from 10 C/50° F to 43 C/110° F [http://sites.chem.colostate.edu/diverdi/all_courses/CRC%20reference%20data/solubility%20of%20carbon%20dioxide%20in%20water.pdf]<ref name="CRC Handbook" />. As gueuze may be up to 5 volumes of CO₂ and the bottles they are usually bottled in are rated to a pressure equivalent to ~7 volumes at 25 C/77° F, a doubling of pressure may considerably exceed the rated pressure in the bottle. High temperatures may also increase the production of CO₂ by any active yeast present, though whether it will cause more CO₂ to be produced than would be eventually without exposure to heat is unlikely.