Cold crashing in the bottle

Well my very 1st batch (IPA) turned out ok, I suppose. Drinkable for sure, and I think doing a full boil was a good thing. I learned a lot by my many small mistakes...

One of the mistakes was forgetting to add the Whirlfoc to the boil (actually I have something called Koppakleer, a similar fining agent). Then while transferring to the secondary I sucked up a bit too much yeast and junk from the trub.

The result was quite a lot of "stuff" in the bottles that after a month still hasn't settled out. Quite by accident one day I froze a couple bottles in the freezer (impatient me...) Miraculously after the beer thawed it poured almost 100% clear! The difference really is quite amazing. The quality is improved--taste is better, and the carbonation didn't suffer (this beer was just slightly under-carbonated, so I wasn't worried about blowups in the freezer).

I searched a bit on this forum but didn't find mention of this "technique", only cold crashing wrt kegs and such. Anyone else had this experience? Or care to try it out?

Once your beer is carbonated then putting them in the fridge for an extended period will be just fine and allow the yeast to compact and settle on bottom of the bottle.

The purpose of cold crashing is to take a lot of the yeast out of suspension and NOT put it into the bottles...

Ok, I understand that the ginormity of what I've discovered isn't easily understood at first. So I'll lay it out for all y'all:

1) My freezer is a time machine. I don't need to wait for months while the yeast settles out in the bottles in the fridge.

2) This discovery has redefined the meaning of "cold crashing" as it's commonly known.

2.5) Oh yeah, let's not forget: the beer was better after having been frozen.

3) This may lead to future developments in homebrewing. I can almost imagine it now: RDWCCIF (Relax Don't Worry, Cold Crash In Freezer)

Seriously :cross:

What do the mega brewers mean by "cold-filtered" anyway?? Isn't Miller "cold-filtered"? Is that why everyone hates it?

In my experience it only takes a couple days in the fridge for all the stuff to settle to the bottom of the bottles.

You could always cold crash the primary or secondary (whichever you do) and that way your not getting all that crap into the bottles.

Freezing is a form of zone purification. When ice forms, it tends to exclude other materials. So when it thaws, it will be purer than originally. Melt water from sea ice has a low enough salt content to drink safely.

On the other hand, ice and bottles don't play well. I'd say you got lucky.

x2 I have also done the same you have done (freezing, thawing, drinking CLEAR beer) with great results; however I have also lost 3 .5L swingtop german bottles when I forgot they were in the freezer- broken glass and beer slurpee all in the freezer!

Not worth it IMO.

david_42 said:

On the other hand, ice and bottles don't play well. I'd say you got lucky.

Click to expand...

what he said!

that your bottles are slightly undercarbed doesn't mean that you don't have to worry about bottles breaking when frozen (carbonation has nothing to do with that, it's all about liquid expansion)

I don't freeze my bottles, but I do put them in a freezer that I use for lagering and let them sit there for a week or two. This causes any chill haze to form and drop out, usually don't have a problem with yeast dropping out. I just end up with nice, very clear beer, by chilling the bottles for a week or two before drinking.

There was that whole 'Ice Beer' nonsense for awhile... (well, maybe it's not nonsense but the versions of beer that were made under that banner were crap IMO!)

Anyway, is this experiment related at all to 'Ice Beer'? I really don't remember what ice beer was all about...

Ah! Just did a little research...:

Ice beer

The process of icing beer involves bringing the temperature of a batch of beer down to at or below the freezing point of water (32°F or 0°C), the greatest constituent of beer. Because water freezes at a higher temperature than does alcohol, the frozen portion of the mixture contains a higher concentration of water, and the liquid remaining therefore has a higher concentration of alcohol. Because of this, a layer of ice can be skimmed from the surface of beer (hence the name "ice" beer). This creates a concoction with a higher volume ratio of alcohol to water and therefore creating a beer with a higher alcohol content by volume. The process is known as "fractional freezing".

The first ice beer marketed in North America was Molson Ice [1] which was introduced in April 1993, although the process was patented earlier by Labatt, instigating the so-called "Ice Beer Wars" of the 1990s. [2]

In the USA Miller introduced Icehouse under the Plank Road Brewery brand name at that time, which is still sold nationwide; Budweiser introduced "Bud Ice" (5.5% ABV) in 1994 and it remains one of the country's top-selling ice beers, Bud Ice has a slightly lower alcohol content than Natural Ice and other competitors and it claims it retains more of the character/flavor.

Many lower-end beers such as Busch Ice (5.9% ABV) and Natural Ice (5.9% ABV) also use the freezing process.

BTW... I was in Canada at the time of the 'Ice Wars' and that beer would give you the nastiest hangover ever. But it sounds like a cool thing to try as a homebrewer if it were possible to do...

german eisbock is a traditional 'ice beer' made by freeze-concentrating bock. it's very malty, and very strong stuff.

Applejack is made the same way (with cider)

I didn't know that the BMC 'ice beers' were actually frozen (why would you need to use that technique to make a 5.5 or 6% ABV beer?)

All this talk of ice beer reminds me of the basicbrewing.com video where the guys freeze a bit of fermented barleywine wort, in order to concentrate it.


I thought that was really neat! They used a plastic milk jug, of course. I loved that James measured the SG of the remaining ice after it had melted, and determined it was basically water. I've been thinkin' about buying a 6-pack of Sierra Nevada 2009 Barleywine, pouring it all in a bucket to decarbonate over night, then freezing it. From the yield that James & Steve got, it would seem reasonable that you'd get about a liter out of it. So, $12/liter of 18-20% ABV beverage....seems like a good deal to me!

cyberbackpacker said:

x2 I have also done the same you have done (freezing, thawing, drinking CLEAR beer) with great results; however I have also lost 3 .5L swingtop german bottles when I forgot they were in the freezer- broken glass and beer slurpee all in the freezer!

Not worth it IMO.

Click to expand...

I've actually (unintentionally) frozen a lot of beer bottles over the years, while impatiently waiting for them to chill, and have never had a broken bottle. Rarely, I've had the beer expand & push the cap off a bit. These are usually the typical Sierra Nevada style bottles. Maybe I don't keep my freezer as cold? I guess until I get breakage I'm not gonna worry about it.

But definitely I'm going to try to avoid this bottle crashing next time, by paying better attention to all my other processes.