Does cold crashing in the middle of aging cause any problems?

I have some stuff brewing in my fermentation chamber. I use the long primary then bottle/keg method generally. At the end of the month, even the youngest will have been in there for two weeks. A few of the brews will be ready for kegging/bottling and I want to cold crash them for 24-48 hours by dropping the temperature in the fermentation chamber. One of the beers will still need to sit for a few more weeks though, will the cold crash affect the aging afterwards or can I just leave it in the chamber during the crash?

Also, for IPAs, do you cold crash them before secondary/dry-hopping, after, or both?

 

Good question, I would like to know this as well.

 

I think if the beer that needs more aging is done fermenting it shouldn't make much difference. Or just take it out of the the fermentation chamber. How long has this beer that needs more aging been in the fermentor? And what kind of beer is it?

 

+1. If fermentation is complete, than cold crashing shouldn't affect aging. I would for myself tend to cold crash and rack to secondary before aging (or keg, or bottle, whatever) unless you're dry hopping of course, you would only want to do that in the primary or secondary.

For your IPA, I would ferment, dry-hop, then cold crash. You shouldn't be aging an IPA, you want that stuff fresh!

 

The beer that needs more fermentation is a mead/honey-wine called T'ej and will have been in for about 1.5 weeks.

 

Maybe it's just me, but I'd be leery about cold crashing anything that young, especially something that's probaly a bit low in nutrients (meaning a more extended fermentation schedule). With any beer, yeast are still working at the 1.5 week mark. Sure, they're working slowly, but they're usually dropping your beer that last point or three, cleaning up funky fermentation by products, and doing other such things. I wouldn't want to interrupt them. On the bright side, you can almost certainly leave a carboy out after 1.5 weeks at room temp and not suffer an ill effects from doing so (assuming room temp is between 62-72 or so). If you really want to cold crash, I'd just stick your Tej in a closet somewhere while you do so.

 

Yea what GuldTuborg said, a mead/honey-wine ain't quite the same as a low og ale.