His friends may call him a snob, and waitresses may give him odd looks, but David Turley isn't about to drink a beer with chunks of ice floating in it.
But that's what can happen at restaurants that insist on serving his favourite beverage in icy mugs. And so Turley has no qualms about insisting upon another glass, unfrosted.
"I'm pretty passionate about it," says Turley, a 50-year-old information technology worker from Fredericksburg, Va. "The first thing I look at in a restaurant is the beer menu. I consider it a food."
Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page are even more finicky. The husband-wife authors of "What to Drink With What You Eat" have been known to whip out a pen-sized infrared thermometer to check the temperature of their wine before imbibing.
"Temperature is far more important than it typically gets credit as being when it comes to flavour," Dornenburg says. "Twenty or even 10 degrees (11 or 5 degrees C) can make an enormous difference in how the exact same wine tastes. A wine that was thin and 'hot' at room temperature tastes much 'rounder' and fruitier at 5 or 10 degrees (3 or 5 degrees C) lower."
Even casual drinkers of wine know that white wines are served cooler than reds. But few realize the difference a few degrees can make, and not just with wine.
Here's what some beverage experts say about the optimum temperatures for a variety of drinks, and the most common mistakes people make.
-BEER
Most beer is served too cold, says Sang Yoon, a beer sommelier, chef and owner of Father's Office, a restaurant in Santa Monica, Calif.
But with most mainstream beers - the stuff produced by the major brand brewers - cold is fine. "Those don't have a huge aroma profile, so you can drink 'em really cold and you're not missing out on anything," Yoon says.
Aromatic beers that are brewed with more ingredients - pale ales for example -should be served around 4 C to 5 C (40 F to 42 F), while beers with big flavour, such as Belgian ales, don't release their aromas until they hit about 10 C (50 F).
-WINE
Wine often is served at the wrong temperature, says Natalie MacLean, the Ottawa-based editor of a wine newsletter and author of "Red, White and Drunk All Over," which explores how wine is made, marketed, matched with food and consumed.
"Too cold, and a wine's complexity and aromas are numbed; too hot, and it tastes alcoholic and flabby," she says.
The old advice about serving reds at "room temperature" comes from the days when the "room" in question was a drafty medieval castle, she says, not today's toasty, centrally heated homes.
Red wine should be served at about 15 C (60 F), though some light reds, such as Beaujolais, are better served cooler, she says. White wine should be chilled to about 13 C (55 F); the glass should feel cool but not ice-cold.
Dornenburg and Page drill down further, suggesting 4 C to 10 C (40 F to 50 F) for Champagne and other dry or sweet sparkling wines, 7 C to 13 C (45 F to 55 F) for dry whites and roses, and 13 C to 60 C (55 F to 60 F) for other white wines.
When in doubt, check the label: many bottles indicate the optimal serving temperature.
"We were recently tasting an Italian red that was unimpressive until we noticed that it was at room temperature and its label suggested 63 degrees (17 C). We chilled it and retasted it and voila! It made a far better impression," Page says.
