ice water bath after you reach your FG?

[Jasper18]

Quick question: After the beers time in the fermenter to reach your FG numbers (lets say 2 or 3 weeks), can you then give it a good cold soak for a day or two in an ice water bath or fridge to help clarify it before you rack it into a bottling bucket and continue on? Also should the beer reach room temp. before you bottle it or can you bottle it cold and then let it warm up to room temp to get carbonation going?

Thanks

 

[oceanic_brew]

You won't benefit a whole lot from an ice bath unless you can constantly keep frozen ice in the water. Even then I would doubt you'll easily reach 3-4 degrees Celsius. You'll be adding ice every hour or so to try and get it down to conditions in which we refer to when saying "cold crash"


You can bottle at fridge and cellar temps. Just be aware that your priming sugar will have a little harder time mixing.

With proper mash conversion and recipes void of wheat or anything else that will add to cloudiness adequate cold conditioning in the bottle should clear up a beer.
Cold crashing is just convenient because it's one step with the bulk beer rather than having to rely on a few days in the fridge for clarity.

 

[oceanic_brew]

If you can find a way to refrigerate your fermenter you should look into Gelatin fining if you are after a nice clear beer.