Bottle Conditioning Temperature - 52 degrees OK?

At www.homebrewchef.com there is a recipe for a Westmalle Tripel - which I made and is indeed pretty darn good.

It calls for priming bottles and then setting aside for 4 weeks at 52 degrees.

Does this make sense? Will WL530 or Wyeast 3787 stay active at 52 degree - at least enough to carbonate the bottles?

Thanks for your reply(ies)!

I think it would take longer than 4 weeks at 52 degrees to carbonate a high abv tripel. Maybe they mean 4 weeks @ 52 after the initial carbonation period?

That doesn't seem right. I don't see any mention of the bottle conditioning temps. I see in the notes he recommends cold condtitioning the beer after a week in primary, but that's more like a lagering period. 52 is going to be very close to the dropout temp for the yeast so it would take forever to carb, if at all.

Bottle it and let it carb and condition at the min. 3 weeks at 70 degrees, though since it's a tripel, I expect it to take a couple months to carb and condition.

Carbonate the bottles at 70+ for at least 3 weeks. When its fully carbonated, then store at 52.

If it were me I'd probably just leave them at 70 for 2 months

ArtVandelay said:

If it were me I'd probably just leave them at 70 for 2 months

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That's what I would do too.

Thank you for the fast replies. I will leave at 65 deg (my basement's temp!) for 4-8 weeks and then store for the long haul at 52 deg.