Cold crashing secondary question...

I have a heavy hoppy beer that I'm going to rack to secondary soon. There is a decent amount of cloudiness/haziness in the primary right now, so I'm thinking about cold crashing it after I get it in a secondary (after fermentation is complete).

My question is this - if I cold crash in a secondary, will the beer still carbonate when it comes to bottling time? I don't want to sink all the yeast so that none is left for the bottles with the priming sugar, etc.

Along those same lines, what is the best time frame to cold crash? 2 - 3 days? At what point in the secondary would I want to cold crash it?

Thanks!

I usually just cold crash for a couple days. Sometimes, just over night. But, no worries about bottling. There will still be plenty of yeasties to do the job. At the worst, it may take an extra week to carb the bottles.

Is there a reason that you wouldn't cold crash in the primary? The secondary won't make it any clearer. I do it all the time. In any case, you'll still have enough residual yeast to bottle condition the beer, even after cold crashing. Most of us cold crash for 1-3 days, and you want to cold crash it right before you package it (keg/bottle).

Thanks all... I use a secondary so I can start my next batch sooner rather than later (my primary is about two gallons bigger than the secondary).

If you cold crash 1 - 3 days just before bottling, do you give it time to warm up prior to bottling? If so, how many hours/days (for five gallons in a glass carboy)?

From what I've read here on HBT, more specifically info from Yooper, it is not necessary to warm the beer up before bottling after cold crashing.

Nope, I don't warm it up, just bottle cold - add the priming sugar solution and its ready to go.

Last question, what temperature is good for an IPA cold crash? 50 degrees?

ZenFitness said:

Last question, what temperature is good for an IPA cold crash? 50 degrees?

Click to expand...

as cold as possible, most of us basically try to get it down to refrigerator temps, so somewhere in the 33-35f range if possible. I've cold crashed using an ice bath that only got it down into the mid 40s for a couple days and it did the trick.