You’re probably drinking your beer too cold, and here’s why

I have a drinking problem, and it makes me order two beers at a time in bars and restaurants.

My problem is this: We drink our beer too cold, America.

Beer typically flows from taps and your fridge at a frigid 38 degrees, an ideal temperature for the mass-produced brews designed to be refreshingly easy to drink while obscuring the costsaving ingredients within.

But for beers aspiring to some degree of nuance — arguably the definition of craft beer — 38 degrees is the equivalent of plastic wrap around a Kandinsky: It obscures all the beauty within. Sipped too cold, most craft beer is a shadow of what its maker intends, with layers of flavor lost to a palate-chilling cold.

The ideal minimum temperature for most craft beer is in the low to mid-40s. For hearty yeast or hop-forward ales, a bit warmer. For even more adventurous styles, such as lambics or imperial stouts infused with flavors of oak, bourbon, chocolate, coffee or vanilla, warmer still — arguably as high as the upper 50s.

In the best bars, I therefore often order two (or more!) beers at a time: one that doesn’t mind the cold to sip immediately and one that’s higher alcohol, more complex and best served by 20 minutes of slowly warming.

Or, if you’re Ray Daniels, founder of the Cicerone beer education program, stick a beer in the microwave.

“Ten seconds takes that frosty edge off,” Daniels says. “I used to do it pretty regularly.”

The Cicerone program, which has certified the beer knowledge of 50,000 people worldwide, spends ample time discussing beer style, storage, tap line maintenance and glassware but relatively little time on temperature “because of the practical challenges for making that happen and because there are so many other dragons to slay,” Daniels says. But as a consumer, he is acutely aware.

“So much of our sense of taste is in the sense of smell,” Daniels says. “In order to stimulate the olfactory nerves, you have to have volatile compounds enter the nasal passage and into the throat. If beer is too cold, it will release less aromatics.”

Beer isn’t just worth sipping at a precisely “proper” temperature, but across a range of temperatures that gradually unfold the flavor and nuance. Such an approach to beer drinking takes patience, thought and what some might consider fussing. But like wine, spirits or anything else worth drinking, the best beers reveal themselves across a journey of sorts.