Crash cold conditioning

[Willy Boner]

This crash cold thing you guys do, I take it everything is done fermenting. If you were going to bottle, do you need to bring it out of fridge for a couple of days to warm up? Do you use the same amount of priming sugar? I would think that a lot of yeast would flocculate, would it still carbonate? I would like to try this on the Hammerhead clone I have in my primary, thank you in advance.

 

[Beerrific]

Yes, fermentation should be completely done. You can bring it out of the fridge and let it warm up or not, there will be more CO2 in solution at the lower temp. You can use this: http://hbd.org/cgi-bin/recipator/recipator/carbonation.html to get an idea of how you should adjust your priming sugar addition for the temp but if you just go with the standard amount it will be a bit more carbonated but not a whole lot. A lot of yeast will flocculate but there should still be enough to carbonate.

 

[Papillon]

Willy,

I cold-age all of my beers 3 to 4 weeks in carboys in an old large capacity refrigerator. At bottling time I just take it out, siphon immediately into a clean 5-gallon bucket, mix in the same amount of priming sugar (boiled in a cup of filtered water) and bottle.

Cold-ageing causes a suspended protein to flocculate and settle slowly to the bottom. It seems to me that allowing the cold-aged beer to return to room temperature before bottling would re-dissolve that protein and defeat the purpose of cold-ageing.

Carbonation takes place as expected with the way I do it and the end-product is cleaner-tasting and has none of the chill haze commonly seen in home-brew.

 

[mew]

To get rid of chill haze, couldn't one just leave the bottles in the fridge a couple weeks extra to let the protein precipitate out?

 

[srm775]

To get rid of chill haze, couldn't one just leave the bottles in the fridge a couple weeks extra to let the protein precipitate out?

No, the chill haze comes when it is chilled. My cream ale was crystal clear at room temp, but when I lowered the temp once it was in a keg and ready to serve, is when I got the chill haze (hence the name). If you want to remove chill haze, cold crash it and then add geletin to it and allow to sit cold for a few more days.

 

[TexLaw]

It usually takes more than a couple weeks for chill haze to precipitate out. It will happen in time, though.


TL