1st Cold Crash attempt, need quick advice!

Hey all, I have a Vanilla Cream Ale that has been on the yeast cake for almost 3 weeks now, and I want to clear it up as best as possible, so I am thinking of cold crashing it. I have never done this before, can I just set my carboy outside (it will around 32-34 degrees) for a set length of time? If so, do I have to worry about having enough yeast left to bottle? Any suggestions would helpfelpful, I am shooting for doing this tomorrow and bottling tomorrow night or early Sun. Also, I do this and bring it back inside, will the yeast start to become active and re-enter the solution, or once they drop out do they stay out?

 

No matter how much yeast drops out of solution during cold crashing, there will always be ample amounts to carbonate your beer.

 

Ideally you don't want to move the fermenter after cold crashing as you are going to stir up some of what dropped out. If you do move it, let it rest for 1/2 hour or so. I cold crash in a wine fridge and don't move it when kegging.

 

If you stir up particles that were originally settled out, they will settle out very quickly.

 

If you are kegging, why not just cold crash in the keg? Rack to keg, gas/vent/gas to purge oxygen, put in fridge, wait 2 days, draw a couple of the pints off to remove the remaining yeast that has fallen to the bottom... Is there an advantage to doing a cold crash in the primary?

 

My thought also !

 

I've done the cold crash in keg, works fine. Mostly did that when I fermented in a 15 gallon Corny and kept the entire process under CO2. Now doing smaller batches it just creates an extra keg to clean - more work is not what I want.

 

I was actually suggesting you cold crash in the serving keg. Once the cold crash is done, the crap falls to the bottom, you remove by drawing a few pints, and then you are all done. Now the keg is ready to carbonate and drink from.

One issue with this (that I ran into myself once) is that if there is too much gunk you might clog the beverage line/plug. I've been able to avoid this once I made sure that when I racked from the primary to the keg, I was careful not get any of the already fallen yeast cake.

 

I am going to bottle this brew, for SWMBO, or I would cold crash in the keg, only one empty keg left and it is earmarked for a pale ale w Abbey yeast next weekend. I am not moving this beer to secondary, straight to the bottle. Just wondering how this works in general, I have never cold crashed before.

 

No real benefit over what I do now, at some point I need to rack from fermenter to keg, so why not rack leaving all the trub behind in the fermenter. Since I have several fermenters I'm not in a rush to free one up.

 

I've noticed that monthish long primaries coupled with trub aware racking leaves me with maybe a pint of trub in my kegs after a cold crash. I've cold crashed the primary a couple times and didn't notice a difference in final clarity of my brews.

 

Maybe that's whats driving the difference in our techniques. I only have two fermentation buckets, but 9 kegs. So, I'm always looking to free up a primary after a couple of weeks (but after ensuring the final gravity has been reached).