Beer Q&A: Is colder beer better beer?

Sept. 21, 2018 11:30 AM PT

Q. Is colder beer better beer?

A. No. This load of bushwah is pushed by breweries that don’t want you to notice the flavorless quality of their products.

Ice-cold beer numbs your taste buds. A beer’s subtleties — assuming they have any, which is a rash assumption with many beers from the mega-breweries — are lost.

Most higher quality beers are best when chilly, not Rocky Mountains-in-dead-of-winter cold. In fact, high-alcohol barrel-aged brews are best when cool, not cold, as the higher temperatures allow some of the deeper flavors to emerge.

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Peter Rowe

Peter is a freelance writer who writes about beer in his bimonthly column Brewery Rowe for the San Diego Union-Tribune. He worked as a reporter and columnist for the San Diego Union-Tribune from 1984 to 2020. A native Californian who grew up in Encinitas, Rowe is a graduate of UC Berkeley and Northwestern University. He is past president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and a former Fulbright scholar. He has won a few journalism awards, but would trade them all for a chance to avenge his 1994 “Jeopardy!” loss. Married to a terrific woman who has saved him from errors in writing and in life, he has three sons.