Seal for Cold crashing?
- Thread starter dnomyaR
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If you are cold crashing in your glass carboy its tough. From whats been said on here it can be a potential danger to seal the glass carboy completely before cold crashing because of the pressure difference. Wether or not it would actually shatter the carboy i dont know, but the easiest no fuss method would be just to use an S-lock style airlock. It wont completely prevent outside air from being drawn in, but it will keep things clean and wont suck in any sanitizer (like the three piece airlock will).
Well, some people might get over protective towards their beer 
. The important thing to understand here is that oxidation happens mostly when you shake the beer and get a high contact with air or when it sits open for a long period of time. Especially when you coldcrash, you are not leaving it like this for weeks. It is the last step of the process before bottling/kegging. I always did it like this, or put an airlock (much easier).
. The important thing to understand here is that oxidation happens mostly when you shake the beer and get a high contact with air or when it sits open for a long period of time. Especially when you coldcrash, you are not leaving it like this for weeks. It is the last step of the process before bottling/kegging. I always did it like this, or put an airlock (much easier).I don't think there is any issue with cold crashing for a week. I just finished cold crashing my current batch earlier this week. Was in a carboy and put sanitized foil over the opening and no issues at all. Was my first cold crash actually and worked out well as my intention was to drop the hops as much as possible from dry hopping. Seemed to do the trick.
SaguaroMan
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You could try a dry silicone stopper too
http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/silicone-stopper-vented.html
http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/silicone-stopper-vented.html
I crash my primary fermenter buckets for a week at 35*F. Suck back isn't an issue using an s-airlock with StarSan or vodka. The small amount of air that may make its way into the bucket has never caused me any oxidation issues at all.
petrolSpice
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That lets air out but not back in, so its basically a solid stopper during cold crashing which will cause a pressure differential. Plus I don't know why, but I feel better about there being a wall of santizier between the beer and the outiside air that you have in a normal S or 3-piece airlock or with a blow off tube into a tub of sanitizer.
On a side note, if your bottling after cold crashing using carb tabs, I would recommend rotating the bottles a few times the next day to mix in the dissolved tablet and re suspend yeast (although i dont think much yeast will end up falling to the bottom anyway after a day). If you rack the beer to a bottling bucket and mix sugar in there, then i wouldnt worry about rotating as much.
