Cold Crashing Question

[JohnIA]

I would appreciate some guidance around this topic from you learned forum members!

After reading various forums I thought I read that it was a good practice to take the beer before bottling - either the primary or secondary, and cold crash it prior to bottling. I had a batch that is ready to bottle this Sunday and moved it off primary to the bottling bucket yesterday, then went to put that in the refrigerator.

Herein lies the question! I wasn't sure if I should add priming sugar at this stage prior to cold crashing but thought the yeast may consume that / it may lead to inconsistencies at bottling. I then thought I should add it after I take the bottling bucket out, but am thinking stirring around the corn sugar is going to kick up all the stuff I just cold crashed for, defeating the purpose. Presenting this to a trusted friend, said friend said I shouldn't be cold-crashing until in-bottle.

So I now have at least three options! Add priming sugar prior to cold crash, after cold crash, or not until bottle? What is the best practice?

Thank you all!
John

 

[Jtk78]

Not until you bottle.

Boil 1-2 cups of water, add the sugar and boil a couple minutes to dissolve and sanitize (I let it cool a bit before next step). Add it to your bottling bucket, then rack the beer on top. You want to let the racking hose go to the bottom of the bucket and in such a way to promote the beer to swirl in the bottling bucket. This will prevent splashing (oxidation) while mixing the priming solution.

Lastly, use a calculator to determine how much sugar to use. I have had good results with brewersfriend, but there are many. It will ask temperature of the beer. Use the warmest the beer was FERMENTED at, not the cold crash temp.

EDIT - I have cold crashed, then bottled with fine results. I would take the carboy out and let it sit at room temp while your making the priming solution. This will allow it to start to warm up, and let everything settle again after you move it. Store the bottles at room temperature, closer to 70F you can get, the better. After 2 weeks, place a bottle in the fridge AT LEAST 24hrs before trying.

 

[BeerChemistWhiskey]

Generally you would cold crash in primary so that when you transfer to the bottling bucket you just have clear beer to mix with the priming sugar.

I think your best option now would be to cold crash, and then use carbonation drops or tabs in the bottles so that you don't have to disturb what crashes out in the bottling bucket. Otherwise you could cold crash, transfer to another bucket, clean the bottling bucket, transfer back, then mix in your sugar... but all these transfers are adding a lot of oxygen and increasing chances of contamination.

Or you could just mix in your priming sugar and immediately bottle as is. After bottle conditioning is complete and you refrigerate them, yes they will clear in the bottles over time but you will have more sediment than if you had cold crashed in the primary.

 

[Rob2010SS]

My opinion - add the priming sugar, bottle it, let the yeast do it's thing for 2 weeks or so, and then put in the fridge to let it "cold crash".

Typically I cold crash, transfer to serving kegs, carbonate and it's ready. There's no waiting for it to clear up in the keg. However, in bottling, to avoid oxygen uptake, it actually kind of makes sense to skip the cold crash until it's already in bottles. If you cold crash and don't have any type of mechanism to prevent oxygen uptake into the fermenter, you could be exposing the beer to oxygen more times than necessary. You cold crash (which could expose a bit of oxygen) then you transfer to an open bottling bucket with priming sugar (where it's exposed to oxygen again) and then you bottle.

I've only bottled 2 batches as of now. The first one, I did as you're talking about - transferred the beer to the bottling bucket on top of the priming sugar. The second one, I transfered to keg, carbonated, and bottled from the keg, which I liked a heck of a lot better.

When I originally started typing my response, I was going to tell you to crash in the primary, then add to bottling bucket and bottle. However, after thinking about it some more, I think you're probably best to cold crash after you've bottled. For kegging, I still stand by crash in the primary and then transfer to keg.