Cold crashing with a Speidel fermenter?

[BongoYodeler]

Third ag biab attempt, Nine days in, dry hopped yesterday and it's smelling great!! It's an amarillo SMaSH. With my previous two beers I seemed to transfer a fair amount of debris into bottles. Since I biab i can set my mill quite tight. Tight enough that it produces a fair amount of "dust" which, after the boil, gets transferred to my Speidel fermenter no matter how careful I am. Now add the trub during fermentation and I have a lot of stuff in there. I think cold crashing would probably help to settle it on the bottom and keep it out of my bottling process, but I have concerns of sucking in oxygen as it cools. I bottle so no co2, obviously. So I assume I either suck in oxygen through the airlock, or, I can remove it and put on the screw-on cap instead. But does anyone know if that can that cause too much inward pressure and crack/ruin the Speidel? Has anyone tried this? Any other ideas? Or am I over thinking this and just skip the old crash completely since it does settle in the bottle? I just have to pour very carefully...

 

[RM-MN]

Time in the fermenter seems to do the same as a cold crash for the trub settling but takes more time. Unless you have a large volume of gas above the beer the cold crashing won't suck in much air. I wouldn't chance putting a solid cap on and then cold crash.

 

[eric19312]

I have 60L Speidel and some experience cold crashing with this thing at various ferment volumes. I think you would be ok with the solid cap idea but it will tend to come down to head space. I have settled on doing 16 gallon batches in my 60L fermentor using a combination of blow off tube and Fermcap S so I really have almost no head space. Still the container itself is pretty sturdy and flexible enough I don't see it cracking.

However for the issue you are raising your better solution might be adding a kettle fining agent to your process. I like whirlfloc. It aids coagulation and helps drop all that stuff out either in kettle before transferring to fermentor or in the fermentor. Cold crashing is really more intended to help drop the yeast out of suspension after fermentation is complete.

 

[BongoYodeler]

Thanks guys. More details and random thoughts that I should have mentioned: It's a 30L (7.9gal) fermenter with approximately 5 gallons of beer in it, so there's quite a bit of head space. I did use a Whirlfloc tablet 10 minutes prior to the end of the boil, as I have on all my batches. Still moved a lot of debris. I do use the optional chrome spigot to move from the kettle to the fermenter, and I probably could have been more careful and left behind more wort/sludge. I suppose in the future I can use an auto siphon instead of the spigot for better control. With all that I guess I'll skip the cold crash and just leave it in the fermenter an extra week. Since my single dry hop (in a Wilser hop sack) happened at day 9 should I leave the hops in until ~day 21 when I bottle, or take them out after they've been in 7 days or so? What would you do?

Thanks as always.

 

[eric19312]

What would you do?

That is a long time to leave beer on warm dry hops. But after fermentation is done I want to avoid oxygen exposure as much as possible so would not go in there to get them out. Personally I'd cold crash with the solid bung and see what happens. These things are not fragile.

 

[RM-MN]

It might depend on the hops. I have left hops in for 14 days with good results.

 

[FVillatoro]

I have cold-crashed in my Spidels and it did suck the corner of one in, but it did not break and popped back out after I added some co2 pressure and went back to normal. However, not sure how it would hold up after repeated cold-crashings.

 

[rightthumbbc]

Picking yeast with higher flocculation characteristics might be helpful for you if you are winding up with a lot of floating sediment when you bottle. Using WY1272 rather than 1056 made a huge difference for me as my go-to Ale yeast. Also, are you bottling directly from your Speidel or transferring to a bottling bucket? Something I've started doing when I bottle is moving my fermenter about an hour before I rack to the bottling bucket so that any junk that got stirred up can settle to the bottom again. If your trub is too close to your spigot that might not be helpful though.

 

[donk5]

Even if the Spiedel holds up to the vacuum of the cold crash, which I suspect it will as soon as you open it up oxygen will come rushing in, which in my mind defeats much of your objective.

 

[eric19312]

Even if the Spiedel holds up to the vacuum of the cold crash, which I suspect it will as soon as you open it up oxygen will come rushing in, which in my mind defeats much of your objective.

I disagree. When you open it back up to bottle it will be exposed to oxygen for an hour or so. Yes it will pick up some oxygen but not as much as if you let it suck oxygen for 3 or 4 days.

 

[BongoYodeler]

Picking yeast with higher flocculation characteristics might be helpful for you if you are winding up with a lot of floating sediment when you bottle. Using WY1272 rather than 1056 made a huge difference for me as my go-to Ale yeast. Also, are you bottling directly from your Speidel or transferring to a bottling bucket? Something I've started doing when I bottle is moving my fermenter about an hour before I rack to the bottling bucket so that any junk that got stirred up can settle to the bottom again. If your trub is too close to your spigot that might not be helpful though.

Thanks, I'll look at 1272 in the future. This batch I used us-05, the first time I've used a dry yeast. Man, it was quite active for six full days. I've never had a yeast stay so active for so long. Even today, 11 days after I pitched it, there's still a major bubble passing through the big-ass Speidel airlock about every 40 seconds or so.

I like the idea of moving the fermenter to where I'll be bottling. I think I'll take a gravity reading and then move it a few days before I plan to bottle. Another reading on my planned bottling day for comparison.

Plan:
Brew day - 1/28/2018
Dry hop - day 9
Gravity measurement and move fermenter - day 16
Gravity measurement and if same reading then bottle - day 20

That'll mean dry hops will be in for 11 days. More than I'd like but I think it should be ok.

Sorry if this comes across as long-winded babbling. I just want my questions and all your responses to be thorough to help me think this out, and also to hopefully help anyone else that might have the same or similar questions.

 

[tylerb]

I have a stainless steel bucket so I'm not as worried about exploding or imploding, but maybe you could apply something similar. As the fermentation is tailing off I take out my air lock and cork the hole. Before I start to cold crash I let it sit for a few hours to build some internal pressure from any CO2 that is still off gassing. Finally I bring the temperature down slowly, a few degrees every hour to put the yeast to sleep slowly instead of knocking them out cold in one shot.

First few times I still had enough negative pressure to suck a bit of air in when I pulled the cork after cold crashing. Lately I've got my timing down to where there's a small amount internal pressure.

 

[rightthumbbc]

Thanks, I'll look at 1272 in the future. This batch I used us-05, the first time I've used a dry yeast. Man, it was quite active for six full days. I've never had a yeast stay so active for so long. Even today, 11 days after I pitched it, there's still a major bubble passing through the big-ass Speidel airlock about every 40 seconds or so.

I like the idea of moving the fermenter to where I'll be bottling. I think I'll take a gravity reading and then move it a few days before I plan to bottle. Another reading on my planned bottling day for comparison.

Plan:
Brew day - 1/28/2018
Dry hop - day 9
Gravity measurement and move fermenter - day 16
Gravity measurement and if same reading then bottle - day 20

That'll mean dry hops will be in for 11 days. More than I'd like but I think it should be ok.

Sorry if this comes across as long-winded babbling. I just want my questions and all your responses to be thorough to help me think this out, and also to hopefully help anyone else that might have the same or similar questions.

I think your plan sounds fine! I accidentally turned a 7-day dry hop into a 12-day dry hop in the fall and the beer was still delicious. I think moving your fermenter should help quite a bit with helping things settle out as well.

If you're interested in dry yeast, US-04 is a pretty straightforward ale yeast (but think english vs american ale flavors) that has higher flocculation characteristics as well. Definitely a taste-difference between us-05 and us-04 (and 1056 vs 1272 for that matter) so you might need to do some experimenting to figure out what you like.

 

[BongoYodeler]

I think your plan sounds fine! I accidentally turned a 7-day dry hop into a 12-day dry hop in the fall and the beer was still delicious. I think moving your fermenter should help quite a bit with helping things settle out as well.

If you're interested in dry yeast, US-04 is a pretty straightforward ale yeast (but think english vs american ale flavors) that has higher flocculation characteristics as well. Definitely a taste-difference between us-05 and us-04 (and 1056 vs 1272 for that matter) so you might need to do some experimenting to figure out what you like.

Thanks.
I like the idea of experimenting. In fact I recently bought three 1.4gal Little Big Mouth Bubblers from Northern Brewer, (had a $25 gift card), for the sole purpose of small batch experimenting.

 

[PsychoBiter]

We cold crash in our Spiedel's. Here is what we do, not perfect, but works well. I connect CO2 to the bottom spigot and start flowing CO2 up through the beer. It will bubble. It will also roust the trub a little, but we are cold crashing so we don't care. Once the flow is going I unscrew the top spigot (we use to run to a line to a blowoff bottle) and stretch a sanitized balloon over the opening. The bubbling CO2 will fill up the balloon. Blow it up as much as you want. When you cold crash the balloon with just deflate....
We mainly do this with pour NEIPA as we want to limit Oxygen as much as possible.

 

[BongoYodeler]

We cold crash in our Spiedel's. Here is what we do, not perfect, but works well. I connect CO2 to the bottom spigot and start flowing CO2 up through the beer. It will bubble. It will also roust the trub a little, but we are cold crashing so we don't care. Once the flow is going I unscrew the top spigot (we use to run to a line to a blowoff bottle) and stretch a sanitized balloon over the opening. The bubbling CO2 will fill up the balloon. Blow it up as much as you want. When you cold crash the balloon with just deflate....
We mainly do this with pour NEIPA as we want to limit Oxygen as much as possible.

I like the idea but as I mentioned I’m not yet setup with co2. Something to think about down the road though. Thanks.

 

[PsychoBiter]

I like the idea but as I mentioned I’m not yet setup with co2. Something to think about down the road though. Thanks.

You could put the balloon in at the end of fermentation and capture the CO2.

 

[goondog]

Been cold crashing in mine for years. 7.9g speidel for 5 gallon batches. Usually i put all my contents from BK into fermenter so i have a full volume of 6.5g. Lots of trub/sediment. I routinely crash after fermentation with cap, but loosen it slowly as temp drops until suck isnt all at once and too strong. Then when close to crash temp i just leave it. Prob some neg pressure in there but not enough to dent the speidel. Never had an oxidation issue with beers. Probably get just as much during the transfer/bottling process as it is. I would just transfer your fermenter a couple hours before bottling and let trub settle as well as noted above though and siphon to bottling bucket.

 

[BongoYodeler]

Been cold crashing in mine for years. 7.9g speidel for 5 gallon batches. Usually i put all my contents from BK into fermenter so i have a full volume of 6.5g. Lots of trub/sediment. I routinely crash after fermentation with cap, but loosen it slowly as temp drops until suck isnt all at once and too strong. Then when close to crash temp i just leave it. Prob some neg pressure in there but not enough to dent the speidel. Never had an oxidation issue with beers. Probably get just as much during the transfer/bottling process as it is. I would just transfer your fermenter a couple hours before bottling and let trub settle as well as noted above though and siphon to bottling bucket.

Thanks. This is helpful. In my mind I always wondered about the amount of oxygen sucked in as a result of cold crashing vs. the amount introduced during the normal bottling process.

 

[pbrennan10]

I just cold crashed with a cap from 62->40 (30L 5 gal batch) for a ~3 days (went out of town) and came back and the whole top had sucked down quite a bit, everything seems to be fine and i suspect it'll rebound but i was surprised nonetheless.

 

[Raymondmillbrae]

Found this thread.

Thought Id throw this out.

COLD CRASHING WITHOUT OXYGEN