Cold crashing high gravity beer ?

I have an old ale that has reached FG and it is around 10% ABV. I fermented it with S-04. I want to bottle condition and age it. For my everyday beers, which are low gravity bitters and milds, I usually cold crash shortly after FG has been reached and bottle after the beer has cleared and most of the yeast has dropped out (a day or two, usually). This works well because the yeast is still healthy and somewhat active because I don't let the beer sit too long on the yeast.

Now, for this beer, I plan on at least three weeks, maybe four primary. Should I still cold crash anyway ? I don't want to risk having the beer never carbonate and I don't want to add champagne yeast at bottling either since it will kill any ale yeast present in the beer.

You could. Personally for big beers I like to rack to secondary and let them bulk age for a while and time will just drop out the yeast but I guess cold crashing, bottling and aging is a viable option too. I've wondered if you are aging big beers in bottles instead of in bulk if there is any differences from bottle to bottle or if they are pretty uniform.

inhousebrew said:

You could. Personally for big beers I like to rack to secondary and let them bulk age for a while and time will just drop out the yeast but I guess cold crashing, bottling and aging is a viable option too. I've wondered if you are aging big beers in bottles instead of in bulk if there is any differences from bottle to bottle or if they are pretty uniform.

Click to expand...

I'd wager that secondary aging is much more uniform, but since I'm in this for the long haul (I want to do vertical tastings for at least 3 to 5 years after bottling), this isn't of much concern to me. Fairly uniform is enoguh for me in this case What I'm wondering is this: "if I cold crash the beer, will there be enough viable, healthy yeast to carbonate the beer, considering its ABV and the fact that S-04 already drops like a bomb on its own". I've read too many horror stories of big beers not carbing !

I'm also not equipped for long secondary aging because of extreme temperature fluctuations outside of my fermentation fridge, plus the fact that I only have big buckets, and no small carboys. i don't want to risk too much O2 exposure. Once packaged, the beer will then go into a cellar a few hours away, to carb and age.