COLD crashing (freezing)

[CodyA]

I hear a lot about refrigerating to cold crash, but what about freezing? I was trying to figure out the best way to completely hault fermentation, and remembered that when I froze my very first hard cider experiment, it cleared better than just the refrigerated cider when I thawed it, and there was no restart of fermentation from the backsweetening sugar I added prior to freezing it. I also remembered that the owner of my local brew shop was talking about how you can't freeze leese to re-use because the ice crystals destroy the wet yeast cells, and my attempt at waking up frozen leese failed just as he said it would.

So my question then would be, for those of us looking to hault fermentation and kill off the yeast for a sweet cider without using sorbates, would freezing be a viable option? Does freezing the cider kill and destroy ALL of the yeast cells?

 

[CodyA]

Has nobody ever froze their cider solid to cold crash?

 

[Golddiggie]

Cold crashing isn't done at freezing/freezer temperatures. Freezing is the eis process (part of an eisbock and such).

If you really want to fully STOP the yeast, you either need to cold crash and/or filter it out or chemically stop the yeast (stabilize).

I wouldn't try freezing the batch for this goal.

 

[CodyA]

Would there be any disadvantages to freezing a finished hard cider on the leese?

 

[CvilleKevin]

I have frozen batches by accident when cold crashing. In my experience it makes the juice less clear and more unstable, but depends on the juice, speed of freeze vs. floc time, so YMMV

 

[CodyA]

What do you mean when you say it makes the juice more unstable?

 

[CvilleKevin]

What do you mean when you say it makes the juice more unstable?

The juice is more likely to start back fermenting after the crash