Bottles Take Longer to Carb After Cold Crash?

[NothingRhymesWithCurtiss]

I cold crashed for the first time a few weeks ago by placing my Ale Pail in my garage for 48 hours at around 35° - 40° F. I was thoroughly impressed with how clear the beer was while racking to my bottling bucket, and the fact that the WLP007 compressed down to a brick at the bottom of the pail.

I added priming sugar prior to transferring to the bottle bucket, and bottled per my usual process. The bottles were then put into a 70° F closet and left alone.

Typically after bottling, I have fully carbonated bottles within 2 weeks. I bottled 3 weeks ago, and the bottles are flat. Sure, I get the "pssh" sound when I open a bottle, but there is no head/foam, and the mouthfeel is thin to say the least.

I asked a buddy and he suspects that cold-crashing took a lot of the yeast out of suspension, causing me to "under-carb." Does this sound like a possibility?

EDIT: Just confirmed that I used the same amount of priming sugar (based on max temp) as I did for similar batches. So I didn't under-prime. I'm going to give the bottles a flip to get the yeast back into suspension.

Any advice is appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[brew703]

You need to use the highest temp of the beer when calculating priming sugar.
I cold crash almost every beer and never had any carbonation issues.

 

[petrolSpice]

I second the above. If you used the cold crash temperature for the priming sugar calcs then you have severely under-primed the bottles. This would explain your situation.

Also, cold crashing does drop yeast out of the beer, but not all of it. It might take longer to carb the bottles, but not much longer.

If my bottles are stubborn I'll flip them over to get the yeast back into suspension. This with warmer temps usually helps. My bottles regularly see 80F+ in the un-insulated garage.

 

[loovenator]

I've got an ESB that's 4 weeks old and the carbonation really hasn't taken off. It's the first beer I've cold crashed so I though it was something to do with that but it looks like I undercarbed it by some distance.
I stumbled on this website (https://www.jaysbrewing.com/2012/11/29/under-carbonated-beer-quick-fix/) which suggests turning the undercarbed bottles upside down (as in cap facing the floor) for 3 days and then turning them back for a further 3 days to get the yeast out of suspension to munch on that priming sugar. That could be a solution if you've put the correct amount of priming sugar in, which it sounds like you have.
I guess I've just gotta wait a while for mine to carb but I'll do this with a few bottles anyway to see if it helps.

 

[shortyz]

cold crashing does not effect bottling conditioning! jesus christ we need a sticky thread on this.

bump those bottles to 80f for a week and i bet you get all the carb you ever wanted.