Cold crash and bottle.. couple questions

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beauvafr

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I have a couple questions about how you do it..

  1. After cold crashing, do you let the beer comes to room temp before bottling? Do you transfer to a bottling bucket?
  2. Do you put dextrose boiled in water directly in the beer, stir and then bottle?
  3. What temp do you account for the dextrose amount calculation (suppose you fermented at 63, ramped and dry hopped at 67 and cold crashed at 40)?
 
I have a couple questions about how you do it..

  1. After cold crashing, do you let the beer comes to room temp before bottling? Do you transfer to a bottling bucket?
No. Bottle cold.
I don't personally transfer to a bottling bucked, but most brewers do.


[*]Do you put dextrose boiled in water directly in the beer, stir and then bottle?
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Most brewers do it this way, in the bottling bucket (or add the sugar solution to the bottling bucket before racking in to it). I use a syringe to add sugar solution to each bottle. Either way will work.

What temp do you account for the dextrose amount calculation (suppose you fermented at 63, ramped and dry hopped at 67 and cold crashed at 40)?
[/LIST]

63.
 
I have a couple questions about how you do it..

  1. After cold crashing, do you let the beer comes to room temp before bottling? Do you transfer to a bottling bucket?
  2. Do you put dextrose boiled in water directly in the beer, stir and then bottle?
  3. What temp do you account for the dextrose amount calculation (suppose you fermented at 63, ramped and dry hopped at 67 and cold crashed at 40)?

As long as the beer comes up near room temp some time in the bottles it will carbonate. Yeast quit working if it stays too cold.

Most of us would put the sugar water into the bottling bucket and let the racking tube swirl the beer to mix. I like to use a sanitized spoon to stir gently to make sure that the sugar mix didn't just lay on the bottom of the bucket as I have had some uneven carbonation that I blamed on poor mixing.

The temperature you use for calculating the amount of sugar to use for carbonation is the highest temperature the beer reached as that will limit the amount of dissolved CO2. Higher temperatures drive off more of the CO2.
 
What temp do you account for the dextrose amount calculation (suppose you fermented at 63, ramped and dry hopped at 67 and cold crashed at 40)?
[/LIST]

Best advice I ever got on this forum is don't factor in temperature and use between 5.5g and 7.5g sugar per litre.

5.5 grams will give you a very mildly carbonated beer, 7.5 grams will give you as fizzy a beer as you would possibly want. So choose somewhere between that fits your style.

and, yes, as RM-MN, give it a gentle stir in the bucket to make sure its evenly mixed.
 
I just did this for the first time yesterday with a big mouth bubbler siphonless.

I cold crashed at 38 for about 24 hours. Took the fermenter out at around noon and added my boiled and cooled priming sugar (2.2 oz for a 3 gallon IPA) and gave it a light stir.

Then let it sit for a few hours to let everything settle back down after stirring.

Bottled as usual. Everything seemed to go OK. I guess we'll find out in a couple of weeks.
 
I have a couple questions about how you do it..

  1. After cold crashing, do you let the beer comes to room temp before bottling? Do you transfer to a bottling bucket?
  2. Do you put dextrose boiled in water directly in the beer, stir and then bottle?
  3. What temp do you account for the dextrose amount calculation (suppose you fermented at 63, ramped and dry hopped at 67 and cold crashed at 40)?

In my experience:

1 - No, I bottle it cold (or as much as it warmed up in an hour or so while I was getting everything ready, which isn't much). I do transfer to a bottling bucket, but not until right before I'm ready to actually start bottling (bottles are sanitized, priming solution is ready, siphon/filler sanitized, etc.).

2 - I dump the priming solution into the bottling bucket and then rack the cold beer on top of it and give it a gentle stir.

3 - I use the highest temp the beer was at, which is generally 68-70.

The beers I've bottled using the above technique all turned out well, but I've pretty much given up on cold crashing altogether. In my experience, my beers didn't come out noticeably clearer....some of the more recent batches I've bottled without cold crashing ended up very clear, so I just eliminated the extra step from the process. Plus, I discovered that I don't really give a damn if they're a little hazy so long as they taste good :mug:.
 
IMO, calculators are not necessary for priming sugar. Heck, I don't even weigh the bottling sugar, I just use a measuring cup.
 
I make sure priming solution and beer are at about the same temp, I've had issues with warm priming solution and cold beer not mixing evenly

Use the warmest temp the beer was at at any time after fermentation was done, this is to account for residual co2
 
I have a couple questions about how you do it..

  1. After cold crashing, do you let the beer comes to room temp before bottling? Do you transfer to a bottling bucket?
  2. Do you put dextrose boiled in water directly in the beer, stir and then bottle?
  3. What temp do you account for the dextrose amount calculation (suppose you fermented at 63, ramped and dry hopped at 67 and cold crashed at 40)?

I just bottle the beer right out of the fridge and, yes, I rack it over to a bottling bucket as well.
I boil the priming sugar, dump it into the bottom of the bottling bucket, then rack the cold beer on top of it.
Not sure if I understand your last question... but I don't change the amount of sugar I use if the beer is cold at bottling time. Since you have to let the beer carb at room temp it will warm up eventually.
 
One other thing - I used to mix the priming sugar with 125ml water because I thought less priming solution will have less impact on the flavour of the beer:p. The problem was the solution was often almost like a syrup, especially when I wanted a well carbonated beer...and sometimes this resulted in uneven carbonation (not hectic but noticeable).

I now always use about 250ml water and have a very runny priming solution which i know mixes easily into the beer ... and 250ml in 20L+ beer will not impact the flavour noticeably (you certainly won't notice the difference between 125 and 250ml).
 
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