Cold Crashed Too Early - Now What

[tenbrew]

I got my brew schedule messed up and realized I cold crashed one of my batches after only 1 week. It's been at 35 degrees for a few days now. Assuming fermentation is complete (I'll check gravity) what should I do? Go ahead and bottle or let it come back up to fermentation temperature?

Thanks

 

[flars]

Check the SG, with a hydrometer, after the beer warms to room temperature. SG could be checked cold, but the temperature corrected number may be a little ways off from the actual.

May need to get the yeast restarted, but that is a separate topic. Check SG first.

 

[tenbrew]

Using WLP001 I'm at 1.012 and my recipe called for 1.011, so it looks like I fully fermented. So should I get the yeast to warm up so they do the cleaning up that I see recommended here, or should I bottle and plan to let them condition in the bottle longer than normal.?

 

[Schecter]

I'm one of the "better safe than sorry" type of brewers, so personally I would allow it to climb back to the mid-high 60s for a week to see if the yeast find any residual sugar. Shouldn't have any negative side effects other than a longer wait, but its better than bottle bombs or perhaps diacetly. The yeast are dormant so do allow a little extra time for them to wake up, don't expect the beer to hit 68 and the yeast to start eating away. 1.012 is right near 1.011 obviously, but you never know. Maybe you mashed lower than you thought and it could climb even further down...like I said, better safe than sorry.

Cheers

 

[Magnus314]

Taste it. If it tastes good with no "off flavors", bottle it.

If not, let it warm up, then stir it a couple of days in a row to rouse the yeast and get them to clean up after themselves.

 

[snow16]

+1 on 'better safe than sorry'.

 

[FatDragon]

The adventurous part of me wants to say bottle it, but the realistic part of me (that isn't very good at mash temps) says let it warm up again and finish if it's not done yet. I would probably make a simple syrup or a tiny batch of candi/caramel syrup and toss that in the fermenter after warming it back up to ensure that the yeast will get back to business and ferment any remaining sugar in your wort, but that's probably just my neurosis and tendency for pointless and foolish experimentation.

 

[tenbrew]

Just wanted to follow up to say I let it warm back up and it finished at 1.09. Thank you for the better safe than sorry advice since I Really wanted to just bottle it.