Cold Crashing Nightmare!

[str1p3s]

I stretch a balloon over the mouth of the carboy when cold crashing.

 

[kh54s10]

Slip a plastic bag into the carboy with the handles hanging out. Turn carboy upside down and let the bung fall between the bag and the side of the carboy. Pull bung out with bag using friction. Google it, it's awesome.

I was really commenting on the possibility of creating enough suction to pull the solid stopper into the carboy, especially if the sizing is on the small side.

 

[bleme]

I was really commenting on the possibility of creating enough suction to pull the solid stopper into the carboy, especially if the sizing is on the small side.

It is more than a possibility. It happens all the time. I've never done it with a cold crash as by the time I started crashing, I was using buckets. I have however filled my carboy with hot water and oxyclean and left it to soak. When I went back the water had cooled and sucked the bung in.

The grocery bag trick worked perfectly.

 

[jerbrew]

Pin Lock corny kegs are super cheap. If you can, and you want to never deal with breaking a carboy (provided throwing yours didn't break it), consider using them as fermenters. You either get a little less beer, 4-4.5 gallons instead of 5, or you can use two cornys and get a little more beer. I often brew 8 gallons, split the batch, and either go about them the same or experiment with yeast or hops. You can also put a spunding valve on the suckers and capture the last bits of CO2 for natural carbonation or use for fermenting under pressure.

 

[stosh]

I cold crashed last month and used the S type airlock with a minimal amount of star san and it worked like a charm.

 

[ramjam]

i usually just put a solid stopper on before cold crashing and works great i use plastic fermenters though idk how glass would do i‘m sure it would be fine

 

[BrewBrains]

I just recently got back into brewing after a 4 year lapse. Today I was about to rack my second batch, a pale ale that I was dry hopping and wanted to give cold crashing a try for the first time to settle the hop pellets.
The cold crash definitely helped settle the hop pellets, but today I learned that doing this creates low pressure in the carboy resulting in my Starsan solution being sucked through my blow off tube, and now I have a nice inch layer of Starsan on top of my beer. I tried to siphon it off and anything that could go wrong went wrong. To make a long story short, I lost my cool and started dumping and even half way through dumping, threw my carboy off the deck into some bushes. I haven’t lost my cool like that in a while and now I’m super bummed out.
Next time I cold crash, how do I prevent this?View attachment 562869

I recently made a makeshift version of that NorCal device with 2 large ball jars and drilled lids.
However, the 1st time I cold crashed my hefeweizen (totally unnecessary I know for a beer you don't need to clear in the 1st place), I sucked nearly a liter of starsan into a 5 gallon batch. Tasted great and went on to win a gold medal and 2nd BOS! Obviously the pH of the beer was too high to begin with and the starsan fixed it.