once you go cold, you never go back...

[joshesmusica]

Just cold crashed my first beer. I bottle, so I'm not sure how it will affect conditioning time just yet, though I'm guessing I'll be finding out soon enough. If you are out there and you have a will to cold crash, then I highly recommend that you find a way. I decided to take up some refrigerator space for 5 days in order to do so. This beer is fricking clear! I've never had a clearer SG test sample! No Irish moss, no gelatin or any type of fining. Just cold crashed for 5 days. I'm excited for the final product already! Needless to say, I will never go without cold crashing again.

 

[d3track]

I don't think you'll not more than a couple of days in time to carb in bottles, and you should have less yeast sludge in the bottle.

Even for kegging, I have less gunk in the finished keg, and it's already chilled to start pushing gas.

 

[hannibalmdq]

Just cold crashed my first beer. I bottle, so I'm not sure how it will affect conditioning time just yet, though I'm guessing I'll be finding out soon enough. If you are out there and you have a will to cold crash, then I highly recommend that you find a way. I decided to take up some refrigerator space for 5 days in order to do so. This beer is fricking clear! I've never had a clearer SG test sample! No Irish moss, no gelatin or any type of fining. Just cold crashed for 5 days. I'm excited for the final product already! Needless to say, I will never go without cold crashing again.

I find it depends on the length of cold crash and the yeast. I cold crash all of my beers before bottling now, but rarely go over 24 hours. Some yeasts, (WLP029 and Nottingham I'm looking at you) really take their time carbing up after an extended cold crash. Others don't seem to care a lot and take right off (Chico, I'm looking at you) regardless of how long you seem to keep them in the fridge.

I think you'll find a happy spot after trying out some various duration/yeast combinations. I'm not really looking for spectacular clarity as much as I am a nice compact cake to make packaging easier. 24 hours seems to be the sweet spot for me in terms of dropping out some particulate, compacting the cake, and not having to deal with extended carb times for most yeasts.

I have a 10% golden strong I'm crashing now. I'm going to probably let it chill for a week but I'm planning on reyeasting with champagne yeast for some cheap insurance it'll carb up in a reasonable time frame.

 

[Psylocide]

I cold crash/fine in the keg now... but the first time I cold crashed and fined with gelatin, I was blown away.

 

[joshesmusica]

how long do you guys usually take to cold crash if you've dry hopped with pellets directly into the fermenter?

 

[hannibalmdq]

how long do you guys usually take to cold crash if you've dry hopped with pellets directly into the fermenter?

24 to 48 hours. I've found that if I gently rock the fermenter a few times through the cold crash process, it helps to break some of the surface tension holding stubborn pellet flakes and they'll drop much faster. Really a firm nuge or two can speed things up quite a bit.

 

[joshesmusica]

unfortunately mine is literally in my fridge, so it fits just inside with not much room left over. which means no room for knocking. i actually am in the middle of an 8L brew right now that will be split into two 4L batches. i might just have to experiment with cold crash times with these two. cold crashing shouldn't be messing with the flavors should it? cause the main point of the experiment this time is hop flavor. and i gotta get the experiment right this time because it's the only experiment i get before i brew a big batch of it for a wedding.

 

[hannibalmdq]

unfortunately mine is literally in my fridge, so it fits just inside with not much room left over. which means no room for knocking. i actually am in the middle of an 8L brew right now that will be split into two 4L batches. i might just have to experiment with cold crash times with these two. cold crashing shouldn't be messing with the flavors should it? cause the main point of the experiment this time is hop flavor. and i gotta get the experiment right this time because it's the only experiment i get before i brew a big batch of it for a wedding.

I think you're overestimating what I mean but knocking. Just grabbing it with two hands and jiggling will induce some vibrations and encourage the hop flakes to drop. Regardless, they'll all drop eventually (read a few days at worst).

In my opinion, it's not going to mess with hop flavor in terms of introducing off flavors, but every extra step that exposes the beer to oxygen will end up limiting the hop aroma in the final product.

As a bottle conditioner I'm slowly arriving at the conclusion that commercial levels of hop aroma are difficult to achieve because of the number of times oxygen in introduced into the product and the amount of agitation in non-sealed environments our beer is exposed to. This isn't a bad thing, it's just a thing. Some people are better at it than others.

Anyway, back to your question cold crashing isn't going to introduce off flavors. It may change the product slightly, but I doubt it'll be super noticeable unless your doing a side by side comparison and posses a discriminating pallet.

 

[hanuswalrus]

You're prolonging the time between brew day and when the beer is actually ready to drink. For hoppy beers, the fresher the better. Though I think if you're only cold crashing for a day or two, it's not a big deal.

 

[joshesmusica]

i might just save this experiment for later. on this one i only want to taste/smell the difference between the dry hops used. but i am gonna try 3 days instead of 5 this time, and since they're smaller fermenters, to give them the small jolt you're talking about.

 

[BigFloyd]

As far as bottle carbing goes, I've cold crashed the primaries a week at 35*F using a variety of yeast strains, primed and bottled the beer cold followed by 3+ weeks of room temp conditioning. No problems with any of the bottles carbing up. I only used gelatin when kegging.

 

[joshesmusica]

i actually took it out to where i was going to bottle it the day before i racked it off the yeast. so then it had a day to warm up to room temps before bottling. do you think this might help?

 

[BigFloyd]

i actually took it out to where i was going to bottle it the day before i racked it off the yeast. so then it had a day to warm up to room temps before bottling. do you think this might help?

Help with what?

When you allow a crashed batch to warm back up to room temp, the increase can cause it to release small amounts of CO2 trapped in the trub layer. That will likely cause the beer to become less clear than it would have been otherwise.