Crash cool, rack to bottling buck, warm overnight

Just need someone to validate my theory here and make sure I'm not going to overlook anything harmful to my beer....

Background: I've done 2 batches so far, 3rd is crashing cooling in secondary. So far the first 2 have been _really_ cloudly. I crashed the first 2 but only for a few days but it didn't seem to help alot. This one has been sitting for about a week and has had gelatin finings added a few days ago. 2 days after gelatin there is alot more yeast on the bottom.

OK so normally I would let my beer warm overnight and then rack to bottling bucket and proceed to bottle. But this time I'm thinking of racking while cold to keep the yeast compact on the bottom so theres less chance of it getting mixed around while racking. Then I'll put the lid w/ airlock on my bottling bucket and let it warm there overnight and bottle the next day. The only downside to this that I can think of is that I only have a 2.5 gallon batch and there would be alot of headspace in the 6.5 gallon bucket. However, I'm thinking that as the beer warms it will release a bit of the CO2 dissolved in it and also a bit will escape from the racking, hopefully enough to provide a sufficient blanket to prevent oxidation over night. Does this sound reasonable? Am I missing anything?

Why let it warm at all?

I like to bottle cold. The colder the better for me.

I agree with dontman,

If I cold crash, I just bottle it up cold. And with cold beer, I dont even worry about cooling my priming sugar.

dontman said:

Why let it warm at all?

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Um, I dunno, cause thats the method I've read about here more than any other and I just follow blindly?

I know there is a bit of a debate about how much sugar to add and does temp of beer mean at time of bottling or fermentation/highest temp. While I tend to lean towards the highest temp theory, if I just raise bottling temp to be the same as fermentation temp then I can't be wrong.

No need to let the beer warm up prior to bottling. Once the cold beer is in bottles, let it condition / carbonate at the warmer temperature.