Benefits of cold storage for Stouts?

Funny I have been brewing beer for fifteen years, and oddly enough I have never brewed a Stout. I picked up Dr. Michael Lewis's book on Stouts which is part of the Classic Beer Style Series, and have concluded that making a Stout is got to be as simple as it gets. No wonder the Irish love this stuff.

Lewis describes cooling the beer to 35-40f for cold conditioning in the secondary fermenter. Other then clarifying the beer (YES, clarifying a Stout) are there any other benefits I would enjoy by dropping the temps in the secondary for this beer? Anyone else have experience with doing this?

Another question is: Would I be wasting my time by reducing the fridge temps a few degrees a day on this, since hypothetically fermentation should already be complete when I rack it, and the ale yeast will go dormant anways?

Here is the profile if anyone is interested.

All I can think of is the temperature helping to drop the yeast out of suspension, which helps the taste most beers. Good luck with the stout - i'm attempting my first one soon.

Stout, one of the best beers I have ever tasted.

I never run out of stout anymore. Easy to make also.

Cold conditioning drops out sediment like yeast, so getting it cold fast works.
After all, like you said, the yeast is finished anyway Or is it? Yeast is nesessary
for the conditioning period. Taking it out of the question fast affects the conditioning.
Now having said that, I personally found no difference between the taste of my cold conditioned and my regular secondaryed stout.

Yeah, I'm curious also. I used Papazian's Oatmeal Stout as a starting point for the P/M Oatmeal stout recipe that I brewed on Friday. He recommends "lagering" the stout in secondary, along with hop pellets, for 3 months---in 33-55 degree temps, which I can't easily accomplish. I've not heard of "lagering" an ale before, but I'm relatively new to this, only brewed 60 gallons or so.

Does anyone know if this really does make a big enough difference to go through the trouble? I COULD put it in a 60-degree winecellar that I have access to, but does it matter?