Beer used to be the most democratic of beverages. You’d be a Bud guy or a Miller girl and that was that. The only thing that mattered was that the beer was cold, buried under layers of ice. In popular culture, everyone from Pink to the Grateful Dead have sung about ice cold beer, and it’s pretty much standard lyrical fare for country music.
But now the cool kids of craft brewing are telling us we’re drinking our beer too cold—and they’re right.
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Truthfully, a crappy Mexican lager sipped by the pool on a 100-degree day would be a different, less-enjoyable experience if it wasn’t ice-cold. Then again, no one really drinks such beers for complexity in flavor; they just do the job if you’re trying to get drunk by a pool.
That being said, most people in the US prefer their beer cold. Founders Brewing Company brewmaster Jeremy Kosmicki is one of them.
“I like most beers cold, but definitely not ice-cold,” he told me. “I believe it’s true that flavors are easier to perceive at warmer temps, which is probably why Coors Light encourages you to drink it cold as possible. I do find cold beer more refreshing, so if I’m crushing pales, IPAs, or pilsners, I’d prefer it to be somewhere in the mid-40s [Fahrenheit] for temperature.”
For mass-produced lagers, ice-cold is just fine, but what makes craft beer distinct is its many styles, all of which contain different flavor profiles and nuances. Big, darker beers, for instance, can contain a wide variety of flavors from chocolate and coffee to toffee and caramel. In beers served ice-cold, these flavors will never present themselves.
“Stouts, barleywines, big barrel-aged beers, and some stronger Belgian styles really benefit from being drank at warmer temps, closer to room temperature—50 to 55-ish,” said Brad Clark, brewmaster at the Athens, Ohio-based Jackie O’s. “The beers really open up and present their true character.”
“It’s often mystifying to experience a beer through its transformations as it warms,” added Shaun Hill of Hill Farmstead in Greensboro Bend, Vermont. “Each temperature [brings] a different aura of aromatics and flavor.”
When Clark is in the mood for a bigger beer like a barrel-aged stout, he’ll order two beers: one to consume immediately, and the other to rest and warm before drinking. Beers like that are often served in snifters that exploit the glass’s surface area and the warmth from drinker’s hands to really “let it spring forth,” said Clark.
It’s not just preference, it’s actually science, says Stone Brewing Co.‘s craft beer ambassador “Dr.” Bill Sysak.
“The sense of smell is the most important of all senses,” he told me. “Beer is food, and just like anything else, you need to smell it, and aroma is 90 percent of flavor. If it’s too cold, what happens is you can’t smell anything. That’s why in the fizzy yellow beer, you get very neutral, unassuming flavors.”
Sysak says that tap beer should be poured no colder than 38 degrees Fahrenheit. By the time the beer fills the glass, gets carried to your table, and you take the first sip, it should be the perfect temperature for a craft beer: somewhere around 48 degrees.
Historically speaking, drinking ice-cold beer is a relatively new practice. The earliest reference to “ice cold beer” I could find was from Fort Worth, Texas’s Wild White Elephant Saloon, which boasted to not only the best brands of whiskey but “ice cold beer” all the way back in 1887, when year-round production of ice became a realistic thing.
By contrast, cellar-temperature beer has been commonplace for centuries in taverns and barrooms not only across the pond, but in America as well. It’s still the practice in many countries, prompting countless college students to come home from semesters abroad complaining of warm beer.
America’s first settlers drank warm, English-style ales from their homeland. By the end of the 19th century, lagers—a style introduced in America by a wave of German immigrants named Yuengling, Anheuser, and Miller—became “America’s dominant malt beverage,” according to Robert A. Musson‘s Images of America: D.G. Yuengling & Son, Inc.
After the advent of refrigeration, the stage was set for the rise of shitty macro lagers in cans served at bars that don’t even ask before pouring your beer in a frosty mug. We don’t put up a fight because we’ll do whatever commercials with pretty girls tell us to do.
Ultimately, it’s not up to the brewers to tell you otherwise. They’re the experts on how their beer should be consumed, but free will is a tough thing to control. No matter how many times a chef says that well-done meat is an abomination or a brewer suggests drinking a beer at cellar temperature, there will always be stalwarts who ignore those directives, thanks to myths perpetuated by marketers.
Still, Sysak is optimistic: “Once a person tries a beer at the proper temp, they’ll never go back.”
Kosmicki, however, believes that you should drink beer the way you want. “Everyone must determine their own opinions on how they most enjoy their beers,” he said.
“Some people will argue that there is a perfect temp for every beer,” added Clark. “This may be true, but it’s ridiculous and stupid. I’m not going to go out with a pocket thermometer to make sure I am always consuming my beer at the optimal temp. The only thing that this would prove is that I would be drinking alone.”
