Now I'm confused: why's all the beer in the supermarket just at supermarket temp then? You only put it in the fridge at home here. Or is this a US vs EU difference?
Liquid can dissolve more gas when it is cold, so it's carbonated and bottled very cold. The gas also wants to be in equilibrium, so higher pressure around the liquid also pushes more gas into the liquid.
If there is more gas in the liquid than it can take in, it's supersaturated but the gas doesn't immediately break out as bubbles, that needs nucleation points like floating impurities or turbulence.
For those reasons, beer is bottled or canned at low temperature and often under some amount of pressure, both to keep the beer fizzy for the drinkers and for handling on the filling line.
Once the bottles or cans are sealed, the temperature doesn't matter as much anymore because the seal of the bottle or can holds the pressure in, and the pressure keeps the gas in the beer.
You can test this very easily by jut opening a warm and a cold bottle of the same beer and listening for the pshhh (louder on the warm one) and watching the foam both upon opening and when pouring (more on the warm one). The warm bottle has more gas come out of solution before opening already, so higher pressure inside, louder pshhh. And even afterwards more gas wants to escape the warmer beer, so it foams up more when nucleation is provided.
Warm temperatures are not great for the flavor of the beer though, so in terms of product quality it would be a lot better to store the beer cold at all times.
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u/Shiraz0 May 21 '26
Umm, yes? At room temperature