ChuckCollins

Recipes 

What does this do and how does it help?

Malticulous

Recipes 

It will clear the beer much faster. It may help meld flavors too, I'm still not sure but I have read that. In any case getting the yeast out will make the beer taste cleaner.

Hammy71

Recipes 

Especially when kegging, crash cooling is an excellent tool. When you put your carboy/bucket in a fridge for several days the beer will clear very quickly. First pour from the tap is clear as commercial brew..... You can bottle after crash cooling.....it just takes a couple more weeks to carb properly.

Malticulous

Recipes 

Even after bottling it could be called cold conditioning. It does the same thing. It also can solidify the sediment to the bottom of the bottle. I carb (bottle condition) for one week and cold condition for one week. With my lagers I'll add some yeast. They still have less sediment and carb within a week.

weirdboy

Recipes 

Before I never cold crashed, but relied on the cold conditioning to clarify the beer. My beer was always pretty hazy.

Nowadays, I add gelatin a few days before cold crashing, bottle, carbonate for a couple of weeks and then cold condition for a few days at the end of bottle conditioning. My beer is much prettier now as a result.

Kauai_Kahuna

Recipes 

+Hammy71,
Usually I let the beer fully ferment out. Five days to 14 days depending on the beer or how lazy I am. Then I rack to secondary and let it continue to condition for say a week. Then I put that carboy in my keggerator at around 36F for around a week.
When I rack into a keg, it is completely cleared and tasting great. If I'm in a hurry I can force carb it and serve in a few hours.
I have been doing it so long and so happy with the results I really can't see doing it any other way.

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In Primary: Belgium Chimay clones.
In Secondary: Braggot, pale ale, end of the world white.
Conditioning: Mead, Cider, braggot, Belgium Wheat.
On Tap: Clones, Chimay Blue, Red, Porter, malted cider.
Bottles: Far, far, too many to list.

Tonedef131

Recipes 

It's something that isn't required by any means but if you have the capability to cold crash the primary for a day or two before racking you should. This leaves a lot more yeast in the primary, which is good if you are planning to repitch from that, and it also makes for a nice clean beer with less sediment in the keg.

As I said, not necessary but if you have the space it takes pretty much no effort, so why not.

Kauai_Kahuna

Recipes 

Tonedef131 -
And I thought I was working on expanding my pipeline and homebrew selection. I lost my concentration half a dozen times reading that list.
Prost.

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In Primary: Belgium Chimay clones.
In Secondary: Braggot, pale ale, end of the world white.
Conditioning: Mead, Cider, braggot, Belgium Wheat.
On Tap: Clones, Chimay Blue, Red, Porter, malted cider.
Bottles: Far, far, too many to list.

Munsoned

Recipes 

If you cold crash a primary, does it have any effect on racking a new batch of wort on that cold-crashed yeast cake? I guess my question is: if you cold crash, the yeast go dormant, right? Can you still reuse that cake for another brew?

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“While the rest of the species is descended from apes, redheads are descended from cats.” - Mark Twain

Bobby_M

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Recipes 

Yes, you can still use that yeast. You don't kill it. I wouldn't go racking 90F wort on top of 35F slurry though. Let the slurry warm up to room temp while you're brewing the next batch.

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