Start kegging? I naturally carbed in the bottle once or twice, and decided to just keg instead. Best idea I had at the time. For naturally carbonating beer properly, the brewer must take into account the amount of fermentable sugar present in the beer, yeast cell count and health/viability, CO2 present in fermented beer, additional sugar needed to reach required volume of CO2, temperature, time, etc. Very very complex task that even alot of the best breweries cannot even perform properly. That yeast on the bottom of commercial bottles is very rarely from naturally carbonating their product, it is from shear laziness, and rushing the product out to market before it has time to clear. "But it is unfiltered!" they say. Unfiltered does not have to mean cloudy with sediment in the bottom of every bottle. Example: Sierra Nevada. They naturally carbonate every bottle, and it always tastes the same, and there is only a LIGHT dusting of yeast on the bottom of the bottle, and if poured carefully, it will be clear beer. BUT.... I digress. In my opinion, bottling is a complex task that relies on the alignment of many stars, and an additional two weeks to turn out right (not just "drinkable", but "right"). Homebrewers are forced to bottle in the beggining, because like everything else, kegging takes more equipment which costs more money. Because naturally carbing is a very complex task, I recommend kegging so the homebrewer can worry about more important tasks in the beer making process, than how to carbonate (or worse, water chemistry)I keg for many reasons: Beer is ready in hours (if you shake) or days (if you wait) not weeks, there are only two variables (temperature and pressure), the carbonation will be perfect every time, and you dont have to bottle (unless you want to, then you can bottle off a keg, assured there is perfect carbonation.). Downsides of kegging? Cost, taste (only if you are a professional beer taster, I bet 99.9% of homebrewers wouldnt be able to tell the difference, but 100% will say they can.), and you drink it faster. Sometimes faster than it would take to carbonate in the bottle. Damn.... where were we? To cold crash or not if naturally carbonating.... I wouldnt, so you can be sure there is enough yeast to do the job. Then I would start kegging.
