Port and cold temperatures

Michael Hann · Post by **Michael Hann** » Wed Sep 28, 2011 10:33 am

At what temperature would port freeze and possibly break the bottle? Water freezes at 32 degrees, of course. I store my eaux-de-vies that are 80 proof or more in the deep freezer, and the eaux-de-vies just appear to be a little more viscous than at room temperature.

Eric Menchen · Post by **Eric Menchen** » Wed Sep 28, 2011 2:20 pm

A 20% abv alcohol-water solution would freeze just under 20 F. Port isn't just water and alcohol however, and I suspect the other matter might inhibit the freezing a little more than water, so I'm going to say somewhere in the 10-20 F range, which will freeze in most home freezers.

Michael Hann · Post by **Michael Hann** » Thu Sep 29, 2011 9:02 am

Thanks, Eric. I'm going to be camping at 11300 feet in the San Juan mountains in the middle of October while elk hunting. My truck would be parked up there, and outside temperatures drop to 15 degrees, 19 degrees at night normally. I was thinking of taking some reserve ruby Port for tippling in my hotel rooms before and after the hunting camp excursion, but I would need to retain the bottle with me when I checked out of the hotel. I think that I may do this and just keep the Port in an ice chest, without ice and maybe wrapped inside some extra clothes, that ought to reduce the temperature swings and keep the Port somewhere towards the middle of the daily temperature swing between 15 degrees overnight to 50 degrees during late afternoon. The ice chest would provide insurance against the result of bottle breakage, in the worst case, if freezing did happen to occur.

Eric Menchen · Post by **Eric Menchen** » Thu Sep 29, 2011 12:43 pm

Michael, this might be an option to the bottle that shouldn't break. Even one of the cold weather Nalgene bottles might be o.k. I've been camping in Colorado in September and had water freeze in my tent. The San Juans are more southerly, but it can get cold in October at 11,000'. Good luck. Mmmmmm ... elk.

Marc J. · Post by **Marc J.** » Thu Sep 29, 2011 10:59 pm

Michael,

I've taken Port on some of my backpacking trips in the Sierra (14,000+ ft.) and I haven't had a problem with it freezing. The temperatures during the nights probably bottomed out in the teens and although my water froze the Port was still good to go.

Post by **Andy Velebil** » Fri Sep 30, 2011 4:13 am

at those altitudes you best drink lots of Port to keep you warm

Jim R. · Post by **Jim R.** » Sat Oct 01, 2011 1:00 pm

Just don't drink lots of port before you go hunting!

Eric Menchen · Post by **Eric Menchen** » Sun Oct 02, 2011 11:30 am

Jim R. wrote:Just don't drink lots of port before you go hunting!

After hunting. Methinks elk and Port would go well together.

Post by **Andy Velebil** » Sun Oct 02, 2011 4:46 pm

Eric Menchen wrote:
Jim R. wrote:Just don't drink lots of port before you go hunting!
After hunting. Methinks elk and Port would go well together.

Elk and Ports go very well together, done it :)

Post by **Roy Hersh** » Tue Oct 04, 2011 12:32 am

Didn't Dick Cheney try that several years ago?

Tom Archer · Post by **Tom Archer** » Fri Oct 07, 2011 5:44 am

Don't forget that the ice boxes used to keep stuff cold in your car on hot days can also work the other way round, and protect the contents from being frozen solid if your car is parked in very cold weather.

To get the best effect, the ice box wants to be as full as possible with heat retentive items, so surround any bottles of port with bottles of water, or something similar. Putting the port bottle into a styrofoam mailing box will also help.

Tom

Post by **Glenn E.** » Fri Oct 07, 2011 9:17 am

Tom Archer wrote:Don't forget that the ice boxes used to keep stuff cold in your car on hot days can also work the other way round, and protect the contents from being frozen solid if your car is parked in very cold weather.

To get the best effect, the ice box wants to be as full as possible with heat retentive items, so surround any bottles of Port with more bottles of [strike]water[/strike] Port, or something similar. Putting the Port bottle into a styrofoam mailing box will also help.

There was a typo in Tom's post... I've fixed it for him.

Michael Hann · Post by **Michael Hann** » Tue Oct 25, 2011 9:37 am

I ingeniously solved my problem by drinking up the Port before arriving on the mountain, thereby obviating the potential problem of the Port's freezing, and by discovering a local liquor store to reprovision myself with a 375 ml bottle after coming down off the mountain. My hunt was a success, by the way, as I took a 5x5 bull elk.

Eric Menchen · Post by **Eric Menchen** » Tue Oct 25, 2011 9:45 am

Congrats Michael. Last night I made this:
http://www.elkranch.com/load_recipe.sht ... cipe11.htm
Pretty good, not incredible. It took me longer to cook the sauce down than the recipe said, and the recipe makes plenty of sauce. I might cut that back next time. This one:
http://www.elkranch.com/load_recipe.sht ... heese.html
marinates the elk with tawny Port and looks interesting. I didn't have time for the marinating. And despite the URL:
http://www.fieldandstream.com/articles/ ... -ceviche-0
I also considered making that one.

theodore anderson · Post by **theodore anderson** » Wed Oct 26, 2011 8:03 am

Eric Menchen wrote:A 20% abv alcohol-water solution would freeze just under 20 F. Port isn't just water and alcohol however, and I suspect the other matter might inhibit the freezing a little more than water, so I'm going to say somewhere in the 10-20 F range, which will freeze in most home freezers.

A 20% ABV solution will freeze right around 15F, but port contains a lot of glycerol and various solutes which act to further depress freezing temps. I have no idea what the glycerol content (v/v) or most of the solute concentrations of wine are but sugar is an easy one. If we assume a sugar content of 100g/L then the freezing point depression (delta T)= -Kf x i x m, where Kf is the constant, in this case 1.86 for a mixture where water is the solvent, i represents the dissociation number, in this case 1 since sugar doesn't break apart into ions or anything, and m is the molality (moles/kg of sugar) which for sucrose is about 0.292.

So delta T = -1.86 x 1 x 0.292 = -0.543 degrees.

Not a big contribution but you can see how a number of solutes/mixtures can further affect the freezing temp. I'd be a little surprised if Port really froze solid in a home freezer, rather I'd guess it would start to freeze fractionate and get slushy. Of course, this is all just talk and in the time I took to type this post out, I could have thrown a bottle in the freezer for some real data. Anybody done this?

Post by **Roy Hersh** » Wed Oct 26, 2011 12:10 pm

Ted, that made my head hurt!

Michael wrote:

I ingeniously solved my problem by drinking up the Port before arriving on the mountain, thereby obviating the potential problem of the Port's freezing, and by discovering a local liquor store to reprovision myself with a 375 ml bottle after coming down off the mountain. My hunt was a success, by the way, as I took a 5x5 bull elk.

Congrats Michael on both your ingenious solution to the Port storage dilemma and taking down that elk. Elk Chasseur in your future? Yummy!

Tom Archer · Post by **Tom Archer** » Wed Oct 26, 2011 3:17 pm

What had that Elk ever done to hurt you??

Post by **Andy Velebil** » Wed Oct 26, 2011 8:28 pm

Tom Archer wrote:What had that Elk ever done to hurt you??

Looked pretty

Eric Ifune · Post by **Eric Ifune** » Fri Oct 28, 2011 9:15 pm

What had that Elk ever done to hurt you??

Added inches to the waistline.

Jeff G. · Post by **Jeff G.** » Sun Oct 30, 2011 10:34 pm

i'm curious about the frozen port though

i've been very tempted to make some port gelato, and if what theodore says is true, I would never get it to solidify

For The Love Of Port