Crashing and Bottling Conditioning

[laughingboysbrew]

Our current large batch process works great for carbonating in brite w/stone. Ferment out, cool to 60, dry hop (if required), crash to 32/35, adding finings and then transfer to brite for CO2 conditioning

I also do traditional cask conditioning, but I rack beer to cask off of the fermenter about 1-2deg above FG and then second fermentation in the cask naturally conditions it.

I haven't ever bottle conditioned, but I know both of those techniques are not traditional for bottling. Though, cask is close.

1) in my current process, for many beer styles, crashing goal is to get all of the yeast to fall out of liquid... but that yeast is vital for second fermentation/conditioning in bottles. Do people just avoid the crashing step?

2) at larger scale, wondering if people crash all yeast out, but then reintroduce yeast when bottling so the amount of viable yeast can be measured/controlled?

2) for 12/16oz bottles, have people had success with drops? I'm worried about over sweetening or under carbonating?

Thoughts?

 

[day_trippr]

When I was bottling I never had an instance where a cold-crashed beer didn't carb.
There was always enough yeast left in suspension to do the job...

Cheers!

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

When I rack my beer into the bottling bucket a small amount of yeast gets sucked into my autosyphon from the trub layer. Even if it was just incidental I'm sure that it is enough to ferment the small amount of extremely fermentable sugar that is used for priming. I have used drops as well and they work. No need to worry about sweetening with priming sugar like table sugar or corn sugar. All the sugar is consumed and converted to alcohol and CO2. Dry malt when used to prime would add body and sweetness but probably not enough to notice.

 

[laughingboysbrew]

Thanks! I know I'm over thinking this...

I'm thinking I might as well skip the fining and crashing steps since second fermentation/conditioning will need to be warmer anyway. Most basic homebrew instructions don't include a crash until it's already bottled and conditioned. Usually hop/trub has all fallen out during fermentation. So I'm thinking I'll just add my sugar to the brite tank first (sorta like a bottling bucket), racking from fermenter over the top of it and then bottling from there... all at ferm temp.

 

[The_Bishop]

The nice thing about crashing first is the sediment in the bottles is minimal; just a very thin layer of yeast at the bottom of the bottle. Not a huge fan of 1/4" layers of sludge in the bottom of bottles and having that much 'stuff' at the bottom will negatively affect the shelf life.