Long Cold Crash

Any benefit to cold crashing beer long, specifically a porter? Any detriment to doing it?

For example Could I leave my beer to cold crash about 1 month?

cold crashing for a month is called lagering. I see no detriment in doing especially if you want a smooth porter as many brewers use lager yeast and lager porters for an extended amount of time.

If you do a long cold crash on a porter, you will end up with a "crispy" aftertaste to your porter, which is certainly a good thing for most styles, though I personally would be fine without it on a porter.

If you make your porter with ALE yeast, the long cold crash is going to zonk out your yeast, and a good % are not going to reanimate come bottling time (assuming you bottle, not keg), so you either need to plan on repitching some yeast once you are ready to bottle or just extending the carb/conditioning time about 50-75%.

I just want crystal black beer in the glass.

What's your suggestion ?

komomos said:

I just want crystal black beer in the glass.

What's your suggestion ?

Click to expand...

are you bottling or kegging?

how long have you been fermenting for?

did you use any clearing agents such as irish moss, whirlfloc, or gelatin?

what type of yeast did you use?

Go with the month, no problem at all. You can add 2-3 grams of dry lager yeast to the bottling bucket if you are concerned with active yeast for carbonation. How cold are you lagering?

I'm lagering at 3-4 celcius.

@brewski
It's fermenting about 4 weeks
I'm bottling.
I have used both irish moss and gelatin (gelatin has came on top like a film. I think I ruined the gelatin Its temperature was about 30 celcius)

I used Safale 05 yeast.

komomos said:

I'm lagering at 3-4 celcius.

@brewski
It's fermenting about 4 weeks
I'm bottling.
I have used both irish moss and gelatin (gelatin has came on top like a film. I think I ruined the gelatin Its temperature was about 30 celcius)

I used Safale 05 yeast.

Click to expand...

I mean I've experimented with cold crashing, and I promise anything "cold crashed" for a month will come out clear. However, I think you'll get the same clarity with a 2 week (perhaps even a 1 week) cold crash compared to a month long cold crash. I cold crashed the same beer for a 2 week period and a 1 month period and both were the same clarity. I even used the same yeast as you.