Cold Crash / Bottling Scenario

[bigrbuk]

Hello folks.

Second ever brew is in my temp controlled fridge at 20.3c +/- 0.3c (awesome!)

My plan is as follows, but I have a few doubts...

It's the Festival New Zealand Pilsner kit, brewing in a bog standard bucket. Not much sign of a krausen yet (30 hours in), but not overly concerned.

So, I want to dry hop when fermentation is slowing right down and leave in for 5 days (in a bag to keep clearer).

Once done, remove bag and bring temp right down to cold crash.

After a couple of days(?). Make sugar syrup and pour into my second bucket which has a tap/bottler. Syphon in the beer from first bucket, steady mix and bottle up straight away, then leave at room temp for as long as I can hold out.

Does this sound like a good plan? Do I need to warm the beer before bottling to reactivate the yeast? Will there be enough yeast still in the beer after a cold crash?

My first batch had a disappointing carb so I'm hoping to avoid that this time.

Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[Sailingeric]

There will be plenty of yeast left to carbonate after cold crashing.

 

[bigrbuk]

Good to know, thanks

No issue with bottling at cold temps are allowing to warm up in the bottle? More chance of rockets as air in bottle expands perhaps?

 

[C-Rider]

Not gonna be a "true" Pilsner fermenting at 68*F If you can cold crash you could ferment w/lager yeast at correct temps.

 

[Gytaryst]

I bottled one batch after cold crashing that was only about 40˚F by the time I was ready to add the priming sugar. I used the online calculator I usually use and adjusted for temp and it told me to add just slightly more than half the amount of sugar I usually add to compensate for the temp difference. Not wanting to create 2 cases of bottle bombs I decided to trust the calculator. That beer turned out to be SERIOUSLY under carbed, (not much above flat). Rather than trust hypothetical temperature adjustment calculations and risk bottle bombs or flat beer, I now just let the beer warm up to room temp before I add priming sugar. I know how much to add to get the results I want at that temp.

I used to do temp adjustment calculations for hydrometer readings as well, until I realized how skewed those too can be. Now I try to do all my measurements and calculations at the correct temps for whatever test I'm doing and not use calculators or formulas to make temp adjustments.

 

[bigrbuk]

Thanks, all great advice.

I'm aware it's not a true pilsner, but I'm still working with kits for the time being while I get used to it and know I can do it properly. The kit came with an ale yeast hence the temp. True lagers are on the horizon!

 

[TungstenBeer]

If I bottle now, I am always kegging, force carb'ing and using the Beergun to bottle. In other words, the beer never warms up after cold crashing.

However, the last time I bottled using priming sugar, I bottled chilled without letting the beer warm at all. My standard practice was to let the beer carb for 14 days before throwing it in the fridge. On day 13, I was making dinner when I heard a plink from my office where the beer was stored. I knew instantly what it was. An exploded bottle. I immediately took the other 47 beers and put them in the fridge, hoping chilling them would reduce the pressure inside the bottles enough to prevent any more bombs. The trick worked, but it's a good thing they were already carbed up. I did have two bottles break at the neck when I tried to open them with a standard bottle opener, though. I figured they had been weakened enough to burst from that kind of torque, but obviously they weren't so weak as to explode from internal pressure alone.

I am quite sure I have bottled before that in the same fashion without any bottles exploding, but I only remember the last time clearly. YMMV.

 

[Gytaryst]

... the last time I bottled using priming sugar, I bottled chilled without letting the beer warm at all. My standard practice was to let the beer carb for 14 days before throwing it in the fridge. On day 13, I was making dinner when I heard a plink from my office where the beer was stored. I knew instantly what it was...

I've never had a bottle bomb. I gave my son a Belgian Tripel I brewed once. I carbed them pretty high, (probably the 3.5 range), and bottled them in 750ml bottles with cork & cage. When he got home he set it on the counter and turned around and the cork and cage blew out with a BANG! scaring the crap out of him. I bottled 26 from that batch and didn't have one single solitary issue with any of the other 25. Not sure what he did other than shake the bejeebers out of it on the way home.

But your experience is exactly why I let my beer warm up to room temp before I bottle now. I have 6 gallons of chocolate raspberry stout warming up at this moment. It was 32F at 4:00am this morning and it's at 61F right now, (2:30pm). I'll prime it and bottle it when it gets to around 70F and store it at 78F until November.

My next equipment purchase is going to be a couple of 5 gallon corny kegs and a counter-pressure filler. I still want to bottle and I want to use priming sugar to naturally carbonate, (forced carbonation just seems so . . . unnatural . . . to me). I like the idea of carbing the entire batch in one vessel for uniformity, not having as much sediment in the bottles, and not worrying about bottle bombs anymore.

 

[eric19312]

I bottled one batch after cold crashing that was only about 40˚F by the time I was ready to add the priming sugar. I used the online calculator I usually use and adjusted for temp and it told me to add just slightly more than half the amount of sugar I usually add to compensate for the temp difference. Not wanting to create 2 cases of bottle bombs I decided to trust the calculator. That beer turned out to be SERIOUSLY under carbed, (not much above flat). Rather than trust hypothetical temperature adjustment calculations and risk bottle bombs or flat beer, I now just let the beer warm up to room temp before I add priming sugar. I know how much to add to get the results I want at that temp.

I used to do temp adjustment calculations for hydrometer readings as well, until I realized how skewed those too can be. Now I try to do all my measurements and calculations at the correct temps for whatever test I'm doing and not use calculators or formulas to make temp adjustments.

You are misunderstanding how to use the carbing calculator. The temperature is the highest temperature that the beer reached after fermentation was more or less complete. If you ramped temp ut to 68 for a D rest and then crashed to 35 before bottling you would use 68 in the calculator. This is because warmer beer holds less dissolved CO2. This is why you will often see some airlock activity when warming the beer at end of fermentation. It is not really more fermentation activity, it is just the dissolved CO2 coming out of solution. When you chill the beer back down since there is no CO2 being generated because fermentation is over, you don't redissolved CO2 back into the solution from the carboy headspace...the amount you had at 72 just stays in there at 35. So for that beer you will need more priming sugar than a beer that fermented at 40 and stayed at 40 or lower until bottling. Sorry for the wall of words.

 

[Gytaryst]

You are misunderstanding how to use the carbing calculator. The temperature is the highest temperature that the beer reached after fermentation was more or less complete. If you ramped temp ut to 68 for a D rest and then crashed to 35 before bottling you would use 68 in the calculator. This is because warmer beer holds less dissolved CO2. This is why you will often see some airlock activity when warming the beer at end of fermentation. It is not really more fermentation activity, it is just the dissolved CO2 coming out of solution. When you chill the beer back down since there is no CO2 being generated because fermentation is over, you don't redissolved CO2 back into the solution from the carboy headspace...the amount you had at 72 just stays in there at 35. So for that beer you will need more priming sugar than a beer that fermented at 40 and stayed at 40 or lower until bottling. Sorry for the wall of words.

You're absolutely right - I'm quite certain I am misunderstanding how to use the carbing calculator.

There's a lot of science involved in brewing and unfortunately science was always my least favorite subject in school; right below math. I skated thru with the bare minimum I could get by with and retained approximately 0% of what little I did learn. So now, in addition to learning how to brew, I am also having to educate myself on a lot of the chemistry and microbiology stuff that I never thought I'd need to know way back when.