Effect of Cold Crashing on Bottling??

[GeoffHaines]

Gents,

What, if any effect does cold crashing have on bottling. My biggest fear is that the dormant yeast in suspension will fall to the yeast bed and I won't have enough yeast bottled to obtain proper carbonation.

Can anyone make me feel better about this?

 

[Osedax]

You should be good unless you cold crash for more than a few weeks. Even then you still might be alright. Enough yeast will still be suspension to carb up. If it worries you, pitch some champagne yeast at bottling.

 

[plankbr]

The effect is clearer beer, plain and simple. Yeast will carb up fine (at basement temp).

 

[trentm]

Gents,

What, if any effect does cold crashing have on bottling. My biggest fear is that the dormant yeast in suspension will fall to the yeast bed and I won't have enough yeast bottled to obtain proper carbonation.

Can anyone make me feel better about this?

It's hard to get all the yeast to settle out. So if you are crashing for a few days you may be OK. However, if you go for more than say a week, you may want to worry a bit. That said, for my Pale Belgium's, I always add yeast at bottling and believe it is important for the styles. In addition, adding yeast gives consistent carbonation.

Another effect of cold crashing on bottling is that cold beer will take on more gas than warm beer (be careful that gas is not air). For my methods, I have found I need to use less priming sugar for beer that have been cold conditioned.

 

[chawn]

I've cold crashed for 10 days and had no issues whatsoever. I think it depends on the yeast you use.

 

[GeoffHaines]

It's hard to get all the yeast to settle out. So if you are crashing for a few days you may be OK. However, if you go for more than say a week, you may want to worry a bit. That said, for my Pale Belgium's, I always add yeast at bottling and believe it is important for the styles. In addition, adding yeast gives consistent carbonation.

Another effect of cold crashing on bottling is that cold beer will take on more gas than warm beer (be careful that gas is not air). For my methods, I have found I need to use less priming sugar for beer that have been cold conditioned.

This was a good post- I appreciate the advice. I typically like my beer a bit less carbonated as I prefer the mouth feel. The calculations I've done call for roughly 3.49oz (corn sugar) to prime. Do you think I can get away with 3oz?

I only planned to cold crash for about 24 hours. Would you suggest more time or will the 24 hours clear up the beer enough?

 

[Osedax]

http://www.northernbrewer.com/priming-sugar-calculator/

This priming calculator is easy to use and will adjust for temperature. I use it when I forget to do the math ahead of time.

24hrs should be good but, it depends on style and hop use. 2-3 days is ideal.

 

[jahdub]

The temperature you should use is the highest temperature the beer has been up to, not the cold crash temperature. Ie. you ferment to at 62F and raise to 68F, then cold crash to 35F. The beer will off-gas at 68F and that will be what you need to use for your residual CO2 calculation.

 

[hannibalmdq]

http://www.northernbrewer.com/priming-sugar-calculator/

This priming calculator is easy to use and will adjust for temperature. I use it when I forget to do the math ahead of time.

24hrs should be good but, it depends on style and hop use. 2-3 days is ideal.

Please be careful with these calculators. The temperature you want to use should likely be the upper temperature of fermentation, not the current temperature of the beer after cold crashing. These calculators estimate the amount of possible dissolved CO2 by the temperature of the solution.

However, if you're fermentation peaked at 65 degrees, most of those gasses went out of the airlock and will never be reabsorbed into the solution, regardless of whether you cold crashed it for a day or a week. That CO2 is just gone. There is some amount of CO2 in the headspace that will be reaborsored, but (caveat at least for the Brewers Friend calculator, I've never used Northern Brewer) the amount of CO2 remaining in your post ferementation beer will be much closer 65 than 32 at packaging time.

You may want to use a little less than your normally do if your bottling after cold crashing, but trusting these calculators blindly has led many people to woefully undercarbonated beer.

 

[hannibalmdq]

Oh, and as for your original question, anything I cold crash usually takes much longer to carb than anything I don't. I know this experience runs counter to others but I find that if I don't cold crash, I'm carbed in just about a week. If I do, it'll often be 3 weeks before I'm good to go.

 

[clickondan]

I cold crash and bottle all the time. I use the calculator for priming and input the highest temperature that the beer saw post-fermentation. I even cold crashed for 3 weeks at 33F once because I was lazy. Never had a problem. If you use a blowoff tube, don't forget to replace it with a regular airlock before you turn down the temp.

 

[clickondan]

Sometimes I suck up a tiny bit of cake to make myself feel better if I'm using a high floc yeast.

 

[philipCT]

This was a good post- I appreciate the advice. I typically like my beer a bit less carbonated as I prefer the mouth feel. The calculations I've done call for roughly 3.49oz (corn sugar) to prime. Do you think I can get away with 3oz?

I only planned to cold crash for about 24 hours. Would you suggest more time or will the 24 hours clear up the beer enough?

I cold crash to clear the beer. I usually cold crash for 24 hours, then add gel, then crash for another 48 hours. After reading recent posts here, I decided to crash a Pliny clone brew for six days. It was so insanely clear I could not believe it. I will probably do that again.

I usually keg half and bottle half (I like having bottles). I can't say for another few days whether the bottles carbed okay or not but I am not expecting a problem. I'll report back.

 

[trentm]

This was a good post- I appreciate the advice. I typically like my beer a bit less carbonated as I prefer the mouth feel. The calculations I've done call for roughly 3.49oz (corn sugar) to prime. Do you think I can get away with 3oz?

I only planned to cold crash for about 24 hours. Would you suggest more time or will the 24 hours clear up the beer enough?

Thanks. If you are only trying to clear your beer, the post that suggested 24 hours then add gelatin and give it 2 days is probably good advice. Also in that amount of time the beer will not have dissolved much more gas so you may not need to adjust your priming sugar.

It is a physical law that liquids dissolve gases according to temperature, i.e. colder liquids hold more gas than warmer liquids. Atmospheric pressure causes gas to go into liquids, at sea level normal atmospheric pressure is ~ 14.7 psi. This and shrinkage will cause air to be taken into your fermenter as the beer cools and of course the cold beer is "thirsty" for gas and will absorb the air into your beer. Commercial breweries that cold crash do it under positive CO2 pressure to avoid aeration and many homebrewers have other home remedies, while others feel it's not a problem. If you don't think this is true, try warming up a completely fermented beer and watch the airlock start bubbling then cool that beer down and watch it start bubbling the other way!

I think many brewers get away with cold crashing without mediating for dissolved air because they don't crash for long periods and consume the beer rather quickly.

 

[philipCT]

Thanks. If you are only trying to clear your beer, the post that suggested 24 hours then add gelatin and give it 2 days is probably good advice. Also in that amount of time the beer will not have dissolved much more gas so you may not need to adjust your priming sugar.

It is a physical law that liquids dissolve gases according to temperature, i.e. colder liquids hold more gas than warmer liquids. Atmospheric pressure causes gas to go into liquids, at sea level normal atmospheric pressure is ~ 14.7 psi. This and shrinkage will cause air to be taken into your fermenter as the beer cools and of course the cold beer is "thirsty" for gas and will absorb the air into your beer. Commercial breweries that cold crash do it under positive CO2 pressure to avoid aeration and many homebrewers have other home remedies, while others feel it's not a problem. If you don't think this is true, try warming up a completely fermented beer and watch the airlock start bubbling then cool that beer down and watch it start bubbling the other way!

I think many brewers get away with cold crashing without mediating for dissolved air because they don't crash for long periods and consume the beer rather quickly.

Het Trentm,

Interesting post. So how would you suggest a homebrewer mediate for dissolved o2? I ferment in conicals and carboys. I could easily lay down a blanket of co2 on top of the beer before cold crashing. Do you think that would do it?

I could also put the conical under 1-2psi of co2 at the beginning of the cold crash, just to insure that any shrinkage would be taken up by co2 and not o2.

Any thoughts on that?

 

[trentm]

Het Trentm,

Interesting post. So how would you suggest a homebrewer mediate for dissolved o2? I ferment in conicals and carboys. I could easily lay down a blanket of co2 on top of the beer before cold crashing. Do you think that would do it?

I could also put the conical under 1-2psi of co2 at the beginning of the cold crash, just to insure that any shrinkage would be taken up by co2 and not o2.

Any thoughts on that?

Thanks. A lot of homebrewers are cold crashing with success and without mediating for dissolved O2. As I said earlier, perhaps if the cold crash is kept short there may not be time for much O2 to dissolve and it takes some time for the effects of oxygenation to affect the beer. That said, I like to cold condition for extended periods (4 - 6 weeks) and age in the bottle a couple of more months. I brew Belgian Strong Pales.

My process is complex: As the primary fermentation is ~1.005 above the expected FG, I transfer to a secondary. After a couple of days I begin to bring down the temp by 1-2 degrees per day. The idea is to keep the yeast active. Now perhaps Belgian yeast are better at this than the higher flocculating strains but my yeasts will continue to ferment all the way down to 40F (I also use extremely healthy yeast). The fermentation keeps out O2 as CO2 is being produced. I monitor the airlock as the temp is reduced to make sure the yeast are active (airlock activity in a cooling beer is indicative of fermentation). Some days the temp can't be reduce. Once the temp has reached 40F the beer can remain at that temp for as long as I can stand it. This method is not really "cold crashing" so I call it cold conditioning.

You probably don't want to go the this extreme and there are other methods. For your conical, positive CO2 pressure will work great. Commercial breweries that cold crash do this in their bright tank. For carboys, some homebrewers claim success by placing a balloon over the mouth of the carboy as the fermentation nears completion. The balloon fills with CO2 and as the beer is cooled the CO2 is forced back into the carboy. While many disagree, I have been convinced that the "CO2 blanket" is partially a myth and will not protect beer from the relatively large amount of O2 that enters an unprotected fermenter during cold crashing. Here is a link to a thread and a vidio that convinced me: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f128/physical-concerns-regarding-cold-crashing-494163/index3.html (post #22)

 

[philipCT]

Thanks. A lot of homebrewers are cold crashing with success and without mediating for dissolved O2. As I said earlier, perhaps if the cold crash is kept short there may not be time for much O2 to dissolve and it takes some time for the effects of oxygenation to affect the beer. That said, I like to cold condition for extended periods (4 - 6 weeks) and age in the bottle a couple of more months. I brew Belgian Strong Pales.

My process is complex: As the primary fermentation is ~1.005 above the expected FG, I transfer to a secondary. After a couple of days I begin to bring down the temp by 1-2 degrees per day. The idea is to keep the yeast active. Now perhaps Belgian yeast are better at this than the higher flocculating strains but my yeasts will continue to ferment all the way down to 40F (I also use extremely healthy yeast). The fermentation keeps out O2 as CO2 is being produced. I monitor the airlock as the temp is reduced to make sure the yeast are active (airlock activity in a cooling beer is indicative of fermentation). Some days the temp can't be reduce. Once the temp has reached 40F the beer can remain at that temp for as long as I can stand it. This method is not really "cold crashing" so I call it cold conditioning.

You probably don't want to go the this extreme and there are other methods. For your conical, positive CO2 pressure will work great. Commercial breweries that cold crash do this in their bright tank. For carboys, some homebrewers claim success by placing a balloon over the mouth of the carboy as the fermentation nears completion. The balloon fills with CO2 and as the beer is cooled the CO2 is forced back into the carboy. While many disagree, I have been convinced that the "CO2 blanket" is partially a myth and will not protect beer from the relatively large amount of O2 that enters an unprotected fermenter during cold crashing. Here is a link to a thread and a vidio that convinced me: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f128/physical-concerns-regarding-cold-crashing-494163/index3.html (post #22)

That is a fascinating thread with some real HBT heavyweights contributing.

Now I'm going to have to look into counterpressure transfers from fermenter to keg.

The beer has been fantastic recently, so I probably wouldn't bother, except that I laid down CO2 blankets on top of a fermenting Double IPA I brewed recently and the hops aromas seemed very improved over previous IPAs. I was rousing with CO2 during the dry hop and it was easy to just lay down a little CO2 as I was finishing up each time.

I use SS conicals, and have just finished putting together the hardware to do pressurized transfers. Now I just need to figure out how to safely do a counterpressure transfer into a keg.

I will need to connect the racking port to the beer-out line - I understand that's how it's done. My question would be about proper pressures all around though. The conical is only good for about 2psi, so then what pressure should the keg be set at? I imagine something less than that, but how low can you go??? And does the beer really go into the keg via the beer-out line? That seems like a very small tube. It must take a while. Also, how can you tell when it's full?

 

[trentm]

That is a fascinating thread with some real HBT heavyweights contributing.

Now I'm going to have to look into counterpressure transfers from fermenter to keg.

The beer has been fantastic recently, so I probably wouldn't bother, except that I laid down CO2 blankets on top of a fermenting Double IPA I brewed recently and the hops aromas seemed very improved over previous IPAs. I was rousing with CO2 during the dry hop and it was easy to just lay down a little CO2 as I was finishing up each time.

I use SS conicals, and have just finished putting together the hardware to do pressurized transfers. Now I just need to figure out how to safely do a counterpressure transfer into a keg.

I will need to connect the racking port to the beer-out line - I understand that's how it's done. My question would be about proper pressures all around though. The conical is only good for about 2psi, so then what pressure should the keg be set at? I imagine something less than that, but how low can you go??? And does the beer really go into the keg via the beer-out line? That seems like a very small tube. It must take a while. Also, how can you tell when it's full?

You are very correct to be concerned about over pressure but fortunately it takes very little pressure to move beer. I think less that 1 psi will do it but I don't have a gauge that reads that low. My vessels will handle more pressure but one I use is not rated so I don't know the limit, I just keep it really low. The way I do it is after the tubing is connected, I turn back the regulator control all the way so that no CO2 is released when I turn on the valve. Then I open the ball valves (I have one at the bottom of both vessels) and gently screw in the regulator control until I hear CO2 being released. I don't do closed transfers (although that would be the most sanitary) so I visually monitor the flow into the secondary or bottling vessel (keg in your case). I also monitor the gauge (30 PSI max gauge) but have never seen it move at all. I should really have a gauge the will read lower pressure. I am not very familiar with conicals but the beer will go out any opening that is under the beer. Through my half inch ball valve and 3/8 tubing I can move 10 gallons of beer in 10 or 15 minutes. Take it slow and easy and be very careful. I would suggest you never have any body part above the conical. If the vessel fails it would probably blow the top off. But if you can safely keep the pressure below the rating of the vessel you should be ok. You and I should consider an adjustable pressure relief valve, especially if you want to do closed transfers.

 

[philipCT]

So I can transfer from conical to the first corny under gravity, with an open top on the corny, and I can even prefill the corny with co2. It's not a closed transfer, but the beer is very quiet going in.

It's the last portion of the second keg that ends up being below gravity transfer level, so that's where I could use a little co2 push in the fermenter. OTOH, at that point I'm usually lookingh inside the fermenter to assess levels and judge when to rotate the racking arm, so the top is open there.

Anyway, I could jaw about this on and on, but I'll try a few things and report back.

 

[grrickar]

I have a semi-cool basement that is about 60 these days, can I put my carboy in a tub of cool water and maybe add a bit of ice to get it down to the mid 40s and crash it that way? I freeze liter bottles of water for my immersion chiller, so I'm not out any ice. Seems like a better way to go than emptying the contents and shelves in my garage fridge.

Any issues with this approach? I started the crash tonight, and plan to bottle Friday or Saturday. It was an ESB with Wyeast 1968 if that helps...

 

[BigFloyd]

I have a semi-cool basement that is about 60 these days, can I put my carboy in a tub of cool water and maybe add a bit of ice to get it down to the mid 40s and crash it that way? I freeze liter bottles of water for my immersion chiller, so I'm not out any ice. Seems like a better way to go than emptying the contents and shelves in my garage fridge.

Any issues with this approach? I started the crash tonight, and plan to bottle Friday or Saturday. It was an ESB with Wyeast 1968 if that helps...

If you can get it into the mid-40's and hold it there for a few days, 1968 will crash out and form a nice firm (kind of rubbery) yeast cake. Plenty of cells are left in suspension to bottle carb.

I crash all of my batches in the primary (using an s-airlock) 5-10 days at 35*F, prime and bottle cold (if not kegging). The result is lovely clear beer and nary a problem getting it to bottle carb.