Crash cooling question

[Edcculus]

I was planning on crash cooling my recent Scottish Pumpkin Ale for a day or two to clear it up as much as possible. I've never done any crash cooling so I wanted to ask a few questons:

1. Do I even need to do it?
2. Will crash cooling affect carbonation since I bottle?

I'm suspecting the yeast will go somewhat dormant during the crash cooling and "wake back up" once it is bottled and back into warmer temps. I just wanted to check in with the more experienced so I don't risk a bad carbonation.

I'm suspecting I just need to crash cool, and RDWHAHB.

 

[DAAB]

1. Do I even need to do it?

If you can do it, crash cooling is great, you don't need to do it though.

2. Will crash cooling affect carbonation since I bottle?

If you do, a good proportion of the yeast will drop out and if you bottle while it is still cool you wont loose much of the carbonation that your beer picks up during fermentation so you have a head start on carbonation there. However carbonation may take a little longer (not a great deal longer though).
If you are making an English style ale I wouldn't even bother priming unless you have wrung every last bit of available residual dextrin from the beer by using a secondary.You should get a similar level of carbonation to what you should expect from a cask ale if you don't.
Prime as usual though if you like it fizzy.
One major advantage of crash cooling is that you will drop out almost as much yeast as if you fined it but wont get the unstable residual sediment that can occur with fined beer.

 

[Edcculus]

That sounds great.

I dont have a referigerator, so I was planning on doing it in a large bucket filled with water and ice to bring the temp roughly around 40 F. Is that a good target temp?

 

[DAAB]

I tend to set the cellar temperature for crash cooling 13 deg c/45 deg f as it is sufficient for fining and means my chiller isn't running to often. There's a picture of it below.
You should be fine if you can get it down somewhere around there or lower, I leave it there for a a couple of days if i've added finings or a week if not, you could probably get away with less though.

 

[SenorWanderer]

I hope you mean you don't have a refrigerator that you can use for crash cooling!! If you don't have any refrigerator stop spending your money on brewing and get your priorities straight! the shelves in my fridge are such that I can move them around and have half wide open on one side; just enough room to get a carboy in there. ditto what everyone else said, the only time i've crash cooled was to speed up the settling because i wanted a beer to be drinkable by a certain date.

good luck

 

[e lo]

DAAB -- that's a pretty exciting looking setup you've got going on there. Any threads w/ details about it? I love me some brew gadgets.

 

[BeerAg]

I crash cooled one of my Pale Ales, and it took like 6 weeks to carbonate.

After 2 weeks of no carb, I brought it up from 35% to 50%.

2 weeks no carb, up to 65%

2 weeks later at 65%, finally, carbonation.

Was good beer by 6 weeks, though.