Difference between cold crash and just moving to cold keg?

[marjen]

So I am trying to understand cold crashing. How is it any different than transferring to a keg and putting that in a cooled keezer? Either way the beer will end up cold.

 

[jekeane]

Cold crashing is a term used to describe chilling the beer for a few days for the specific purpose of dropping yeast and other precipitates out of the beer before packaging. Many people do this in conjunction with adding gelatin in the fermenter to rack fully cleared beer to their keg.

the benefit of this is less or no precipitated yeast in your keg.

 

[marjen]

I guess I still fail to see much difference. I mean it will fall out in the keg as well.

 

[MapleGroveAleworks]

There's no reason to cold crash if you keg.

 

[marjen]

OK so basically same thing. I can see trying to keep crud out of the keg, but I guess we people say it clears the beer, I assume its going to be as clear in the keg once everything drops out, especially if you have a filter or something on the dip tube.

 

[Pintabone]

Completely disagree. Since getting a brew bucket I cold crashed attached to CO2. Was able to use a pressure transfer through the out of the keg without any hop material clogging on a highly dry hopped beer. I thought this was a pretty great result of cold crashing.

 

[micraftbeer]

I agree with the experience noted here. There is no difference in the cold crash itself. The key difference is where all the precipitate goes. Typically cold crashing is followed by racking the beer off the top and leaving the fallout behind. So if you do that in your serving keg, I don't know how effectively pouring beer of it will suck all that precipitate out. Maybe it's just a matter of pulling off a pint or two and then you're back at the same point.

I have thought about the benefits of cold crashing in the keg versus a fermentor being the ease with which you can purge the headspace of oxygen/fill with CO2 in a keg. I haven't yet migrated to cold crashing in serving keg and then pouring off the first pint or so, but I'm getting closer...

 

[marjen]

Ok. Make sense and the explanation is what I thought. No real difference other than where it is done. There is potential value to assist with less crap during and after the transfer. Cool, thanks.

 

[Sadu]

It also depends if you are moving the keg around at all. If you need to take the keg to a party, its probably best to leave the sludge behind in the fermentor as much as is practical.
If the keg will be static in your keezer then it's going to pour clear after the first pint or so regardless.

 

[JONNYROTTEN]

Its just for keeping the crud out of the keg.

I can say from experience, I've NOT cold crashed your basic 04 and 05 yeast and it pretty much never cleared. Maybe after 2 or more weeks and by then I gave up. This is the exact reason I filter all my beers now with a 1 micron filter....no more yeast issues in the keg...and yeast in beer is the death of a beer flavor wise.

They say 02 pressure has no effect on yeast not settling..I can say with certainty that's not true as Ive kegged a double batch with one under pressure and one not and the one that wasn't under pressure dropped in a few days and the pressurized one never cleared...filtering is the new homebrew way in my experience