I have a couple kegs of beer that froze out in the garage this winter.
What effects should I expect on flavor, head retention and body after thawing?
My beer was relatively sediment free, but would you expect accelerated lysis of any yeast in the beer upon freezing?
I froze a saison in the primary fermenter while cold crashing. Defrosted on the counter to bottle. Very very tasty beer. That was pre-carbonation, but if you're force carbing, it really should not make a difference.
I froze a keg of Hefeweizen totally stiff. I had accidentally pulled the temp control probe out of the deep freezer that the kegs were in. The freezer ran at its "normal" freezing temps for maybe 2 days before I noticed it, so the keg was TOTALLY frozen as far as I could tell.
Good news: the beer was still delicious! I had decent head on the hefe, and its flavor and body were identical to the beer before it was frozen.
How long and how solid were they frozen? They couldn't have been all that frozen or the kegs would have deformed/ruptured. Have you tried any of the beer? It's probably just fine.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but off flavors associated with autolysis come from the living yeast munching on the dead ones. They'll all be dormant from the cold anyway, so not much chance of that happening. A few dead yeast in the bottom of the keg shouldn't hurt anything.
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