Is cold secondary fermentation causing low carbonation?

The last few brews I've done (extract recipes) resulted in low head volumes as well as low carbonation in the finished beer. My primary temps are normal for the yeast strain, but after I racked to secondary, I put them in the cold basement for conditioning (~55-60*) for a few weeks. My question is could this massive reduction in temperature be shocking/killing the yeast to the point that when I bottle, there isn't enough active yeast to feed on the corn sugar in order to carbonate?

That should be fine for the yeast, how long are you secondarying? Are you keeping the primed bottles at room temperature for at least 21 days?

55-60 is fine. Are you sure the carbonation is low? Or is it just a lack of head. Champagne, for instance, is very carbonated but has no head after a second or two.

COLO you may have something there...
I always put the newly primed bottles back down in the cold basement after a bottling session. In other words, the beer is at too low a tempereature for the yeast to reactivate?

greenleaf586 said:

COLO you may have something there...
I always put the newly primed bottles back down in the cold basement after a bottling session. In other words, the beer is at too low a tempereature for the yeast to reactivate?

Click to expand...

Yes!

Prime and then keep the bottles at room temperature for at least three weeks! At 65 degrees, they might carbonate but slowly. At 60 degrees, may ale yeast strain will go dormant.

If you need to keep the bottled beer in a place where the temp range is lower than 65F than it will take a week or few longer for the bottles to condition.

So the carbonation thing is somewhat solved, now on to the head issue. Why would these beers be pouring with little to no head?

greenleaf586 said:

So the carbonation thing is somewhat solved, now on to the head issue. Why would these beers be pouring with little to no head?

Click to expand...

Because they aren't carbed well, they won't have a head.

Gotcha!! Thanks!!