Crash Cooling before bottling?

I am in the process of making an IPA, which I plan on bottling this weekend. Before I racked it to a secondary and dry-hopped, I crashed cooled it at 40# for 48 hours. I was following directions from a recipe on the forums, however it occured to me that the original poster kegged their beer, and bottle carbonation was not an issue.

My question is whether or not by crash cooling my beer, did I remove too much of the yeast to successfully carbonate my beer using corn sugar and bottling it?

Well, probably it will still carb, just not as "fast" as you might have hoped.

Go ahead and use the standard amount of priming sugar. When you are happy with the dry hopping rack it off the hops into your bottling bucket. Once it is capped give it the bare minimum 21 days at 71°F, then pull ONE bottle and stick it in the fridge for two days.

Then crack the one to see where you are. There is a vid in my sig that might help you guess how many more weeks to wait before you sample a second one.

Next time around of course bottle condition, then crash cool. Live and learn, it will end up being OK.

Yes, you can bottle after crash cooling (or/and adding gelatin). I've done it several times with great results. It may take a week or two longer to properly carbonate, but....the beer gets better the longer you wait anyway.

Thanks for the info. It sounds as though it could still end up being really good beer.

Hammy71 said:

Yes, you can bottle after crash cooling (or/and adding gelatin). I've done it several times with great results. It may take a week or two longer to properly carbonate, but....the beer gets better the longer you wait anyway.

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Not if you like a green beer.... some IPA's are to be consumed as soon as possible per the brewer...

I use the gelatin trick to brighten my beer for serving at parties and thing, where presentation is of any concern. I've always played on the fact that you would have issues bottle conditioning post gelatinizing the beer.... So you don't find it (gelatin/filter) hampering the conditioning of the beer?

Update - I opened one of these after only 6 days in the bottle, and it has carbonated very nicely. It will obviously improve over the coming weeks, but I was pleasantly suprised that cold crashing prior to bottling did not adversely affect my beer.

I crash cool all my carboys/buckets for a week, then bottle. you get so much less dregs in the bottom of the bottles.

CorporateCrumb said:

Update - I opened one of these after only 6 days in the bottle, and it has carbonated very nicely. It will obviously improve over the coming weeks, but I was pleasantly suprised that cold crashing prior to bottling did not adversely affect my beer.

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So the crash cooling did not affect the carbonation process whatsoever after you racked to the bottling bucket? If not, then this is music to my ears because I've wanted to crash cool (I have the luxury of having a refridgerator in my garage that is empty - we only use it to store stuff in the freezer portion and it is plenty big enough to hold two fermenting buckets side by side), but I've been wary of it because I do not have a kegging system as of yet (it's the next thing on my wishlist).

That's correct. If anything, the beer in question carbed faster than my 2 previous brews. Go figure.

CorporateCrumb said:

That's correct. If anything, the beer in question carbed faster than my 2 previous brews. Go figure.

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Awesome! Thanks.