Weird and probably stupid cold crash question

[Dland]

I cold crash after I put in kegs, which is after fermentation is finished, diacetyl rest(for cool fermented lagers)and spunding. My beers come out quite clear after proper aging. Slightly shorten or bent dip tube helps. No oxidation worries.

I rather not have oxidized beer, it does not taste as good. Also, any suck back, even though Starsan, introduces the possibility of air born infection.

 

[toddo97]

Unfortunately, I'm not kegging yet so based on what I've read here, I don't see the upside of cold crashing outweighing the obvious downside unless you're kegging. I would rather have slightly hazier bottled beer than clear beer that tastes like cardboard!

 

[specharka]

I’m just not sure that oxygen exposure is as big a deal as everyone makes it out to be. Even in the case of the purple NEIPA, how can we know that it is from oxygen and not some other chemical reaction. Maybe the myrcinol reacts with the beta glucodines to unisomerize the 2 diasinine?

Well, science, for one thing. You don’t need much oxygen exposure to dull some of the fresh malt flavors in bright beer. A bit more than that and you’ll start introducing notes of sherry and wet cardboard. There’s a few styles that benefit from slight oxidation (namely traditional Flanders red and gueuze), but it’s microscopic on the brewing scale and those brewers still routinely dump overly acetic barrels. NEIPA is a very sensitive style due to all the hop compounds in the wort — I’d love to hear someone who has successfully bottle conditioned a NEIPA to come forward with their process.

The thing about oxidation in homebrewing is you probably won’t recognize the symptoms until you taste a brew that’s not affected. I routinely had issues with my gravity samples tasting fantastic, but depreciating after less than 2 weeks in the bottle. I just assumed that’s how all homebrew tasted — until I started making some simple changes to my brewing process. I won’t pretend that my track record has been perfect...I recently dumped a golden sour due to excessive pear notes (ethyl acetate). But at least I can recognize the symptoms now.

 

[cmac62]

I've lost track of how many times I have posted this video (and others have posted before me), but the CO2 blanket myth lives on.



Note that Br2 has a molecular weight of 159.8. Air has an average molecular wt of about 28.8. CO2 has a molecular weight of 44. Br2 has a density 159.8 / 44 = 3.6 times higher than CO2, and the Br2 completely homogenizes with are in the video in about 15 minutes, without aid of air currents or convection. Later in the video the NO2 (molecular wt 46, slightly higher than CO2) homogenizes very much faster than Br2.

Just opening a closed vessel will create air currents that will greatly speed up the mixing compared to diffusion alone.

Brew on

Cool vid, I am now much smarter
I need to up my reduction of O2 game after see the vid.

 

[Zigs6]

I have to share my experience on this topic although it will be slightly off track. I make primarily German lagers and I used to cold crash regularly. I would just drop the temp all the way down from fermentation temps to 32 as rapidly as possible and I was never really fully satisfied with my lagers until I just stopped doing this practice altogether. I kept detecting what I thought was an oxidation type caramel note / sweetness and in lagers that is very detectable. On my last few batches, I did not cold crash at all and just transferred into kegs warm. I then "lagered" in kegs under pressure while it was carbonating and that oxidized flavor went away. I'm pretty convinced it was caused by cold crashing. If you think about it, there is really no point in cold crashing if you keg. You can just pull off a couple of pints from your kegerator before serving your first beer. If you are bottling on the other hand, I can see why you would want to do this but you would also have a secondary fermentation going on that would help consume oxygen shortly afterwards. Some of the damage would already have been done but at what rate I'm not sure. From my experience my beer got better when I stopped cold crashing.

 

[Jtvann]

A little bit of money fixes everything. If you’re using a Ss Brewbucket, this is an insanely easy fix. I will provide pictures when I get home, but will provide links here to my process.

Install one of these onto your lid. Do NOT install it in the center depressed portion of the lid. Install it exactly as the photos on the website show.

https://www.ssbrewtech.com/products/a-new-accessory-weldless-1-5-tc-fitting

Attach one of these during fermentation:

https://www.norcalbrewingsolutions.com/store/1.5-Inch-Tri-Clover-Connection-Blow-Off-Tube.html

When you’re ready to dry hop, remove the blow off tube and drop pellets through the small hole. There could be small positive pressure from active fermentation, or you could attach a CO2 tank to bottom port. This is just for long enough to create positive pressure while dry hopping. You’re not worried about stirring up sediment at this point so no loss there. If you have really active fermentation going, such as a NEIPA, put the blow off back on. If fermentation has died down so that you won’t have any more solids blowing through the blow off, switch the blow off cane for this.

https://www.ssbrewtech.com/products/1-5-tc-pressurized-transfer-fitting

If slight pressure builds, no biggie, it will vent. Attach the barb to a CO2 tank and regulator. Leave it as is, turned off with no pressure through the remainder of fermentation. The lid will actually bow up slightly with pressure. That’s fine. As long as your pressure fitting isn’t gunked up, it will vent as needed.

When it’s time to cold crash, don’t worry about crashing slow. Crash it fast. Stay there and watch it. The lid will suck in as pressure drops. Turn on the CO2 to the ever slightest pressure, just to pop the lid back up, then turn it back off. When it reaches 35 or even 32 degrees you’re done. Turn off CO2. It won’t suck any more in.

When you’re ready to keg ... guess what, you’ve already set up your pressurized transfer. Just hook into the keg out with a tube to the bottom port. Turn CO 2 on just till it starts flowing. Fill as normal.

Sure it costs a little for all the fittings, but you’ve already spent close to 450 on the brew bucket and FTss. It’s an easy process

 

[Blazinlow86]

I have to share my experience on this topic although it will be slightly off track. I make primarily German lagers and I used to cold crash regularly. I would just drop the temp all the way down from fermentation temps to 32 as rapidly as possible and I was never really fully satisfied with my lagers until I just stopped doing this practice altogether. I kept detecting what I thought was an oxidation type caramel note / sweetness and in lagers that is very detectable. On my last few batches, I did not cold crash at all and just transferred into kegs warm. I then "lagered" in kegs under pressure while it was carbonating and that oxidized flavor went away. I'm pretty convinced it was caused by cold crashing. If you think about it, there is really no point in cold crashing if you keg. You can just pull off a couple of pints from your kegerator before serving your first beer. If you are bottling on the other hand, I can see why you would want to do this but you would also have a secondary fermentation going on that would help consume oxygen shortly afterwards. Some of the damage would already have been done but at what rate I'm not sure. From my experience my beer got better when I stopped cold crashing.

I would have to disagree that there's no point cold crashing if you keg The whole purpose to cold crashing to me is keeping the sediment OUT of the keg. Crashing in the keg is definitely the easiest way to do it but then your gonna end up with all that sediment in the bottom and anytime you move/bump the keg your gonna have cloudy beer again. I oftan have friends come over and after sampling a few brews I usually give them a keg of there favorite to take home each. I'm after as professional of a finished product so having there beer all cloudy when they get it home would be unacceptable to me. Obviously it depends on your end goal. Cheers

 

[GPP33]

I have to share my experience on this topic although it will be slightly off track. I make primarily German lagers and I used to cold crash regularly. I would just drop the temp all the way down from fermentation temps to 32 as rapidly as possible and I was never really fully satisfied with my lagers until I just stopped doing this practice altogether. I kept detecting what I thought was an oxidation type caramel note / sweetness and in lagers that is very detectable. On my last few batches, I did not cold crash at all and just transferred into kegs warm. I then "lagered" in kegs under pressure while it was carbonating and that oxidized flavor went away. I'm pretty convinced it was caused by cold crashing. If you think about it, there is really no point in cold crashing if you keg. You can just pull off a couple of pints from your kegerator before serving your first beer. If you are bottling on the other hand, I can see why you would want to do this but you would also have a secondary fermentation going on that would help consume oxygen shortly afterwards. Some of the damage would already have been done but at what rate I'm not sure. From my experience my beer got better when I stopped cold crashing.

I only cold crash heavily hopped IPAs, and only to compact hop debris, and I have a method to keep O2 form getting in. Absolutely no point in cold crashing if you keg. If you desire to have perfectly clear beer to give a keg to friends you'll need to cold crash for a lot longer than the typical 1 day and it'll be easier and make better beer if you do it in a keg then transfer to another, liquid purged, keg. At least in my experience.

 

[Dland]

The short or bent dip tube keeps the sediment out beer served from my cold crashed kegs. But that is a good point about moving them around. Mine stay in the same spot in 12 keg lager coffin from the time they are crashed to the time they are empty. If I want to take some beer somewhere, I use my insulated growler.

(

 

[divrack]

I know the big problem with cold crashing is suck back. If I were to use a solid bung rather than an airlock when I cold crash it would presumably prevent any suck back. Once it's reached 32-34 degrees for a day or two, would it make any sense to bring the temp back up to fermentation temps? Would that balance out the pressure difference caused by the crashing but still retain the settling benefits?

It's a sucky question for sure. I suppose the easiest thing to do would be put in the bung before complete fermentation is done to get positive pressure, then there be no sucking.

 

[toddo97]

It's a sucky question for sure. I suppose the easiest thing to do would be put in the bung before complete fermentation is done to get positive pressure, then there be no sucking.

Unless I put it in too early and caused a geyser in my fermenter. That would really suck

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

Well, science, for one thing. You don’t need much oxygen exposure to dull some of the fresh malt flavors in bright beer. A bit more than that and you’ll start introducing notes of sherry and wet cardboard. There’s a few styles that benefit from slight oxidation (namely traditional Flanders red and gueuze), but it’s microscopic on the brewing scale and those brewers still routinely dump overly acetic barrels. NEIPA is a very sensitive style due to all the hop compounds in the wort — I’d love to hear someone who has successfully bottle conditioned a NEIPA to come forward with their process.

The thing about oxidation in homebrewing is you probably won’t recognize the symptoms until you taste a brew that’s not affected. I routinely had issues with my gravity samples tasting fantastic, but depreciating after less than 2 weeks in the bottle. I just assumed that’s how all homebrew tasted — until I started making some simple changes to my brewing process. I won’t pretend that my track record has been perfect...I recently dumped a golden sour due to excessive pear notes (ethyl acetate). But at least I can recognize the symptoms now.

Boogeyman, check
Confirmation bias, check
Herd mentality, check
“science”, check

Ready for O2 exposure Captain!

Sorry for being all snarky, I’m not pointing this at you personally, I know that oxidation is a thing and made a post about a Barleywine I made recently where I could see the effects. Its just frustrating to me when one is trying to improve and the information out there is so subjective.

Even in Brülosophy exBeeriments the reaults are cloudy so to speak. Here’s the one on oxidation http://brulosophy.com/2016/12/19/po...normal-vs-high-oxidation-exbeeriment-results/

 

[Blazinlow86]

I only cold crash heavily hopped IPAs, and only to compact hop debris, and I have a method to keep O2 form getting in. Absolutely no point in cold crashing if you keg. If you desire to have perfectly clear beer to give a keg to friends you'll need to cold crash for a lot longer than the typical 1 day and it'll be easier and make better beer if you do it in a keg then transfer to another, liquid purged, keg. At least in my experience.

Again if you dont want the sediment in your keg then crashing in the fermenter is obviously the better way to go.sure you could rerack again but that's just adding another step l/ transfer. I'd love to hear how leaving the sediment in the keg makes better beer though. Definitely easier but better? Cheers

 

[ApolloSimcoe]

Its just frustrating to me when one is trying to improve and the information out there is so subjective.

This right here is one of the reasons this is a kickin' hobby. You can try different techniques to see what works best for you. Ask a 100 home brewers and you'll likely get a 100 different answers/suggestions

 

[divrack]

Boogeyman, check
Confirmation bias, check
Herd mentality, check
“science”, check

Ready for O2 exposure Captain!

Sorry for being all snarky, I’m not pointing this at you personally, I know that oxidation is a thing and made a post about a Barleywine I made recently where I could see the effects. Its just frustrating to me when one is trying to improve and the information out there is so subjective.

Even in Brülosophy exBeeriments the reaults are cloudy so to speak. Here’s the one on oxidation http://brulosophy.com/2016/12/19/po...normal-vs-high-oxidation-exbeeriment-results/

A panel of brulosophy tasters failed to meet statistical significance in identifying a beer fermented with dry yeast at low pitching rate from the third mobile infantry division of the guadalupian armed forced. Those who picked the correct sample filled to correctly identify that one was a beer while the others were at war

 

[GPP33]

Again if you dont want the sediment in your keg then crashing in the fermenter is obviously the better way to go.sure you could rerack again but that's just adding another step l/ transfer. I'd love to hear how leaving the sediment in the keg makes better beer though. Definitely easier but better? Cheers

I'd bet the whole keg of beer that sediment in the keg is better than cold crashing without CO2 protection. Do I have evidence? No, but I'm hedging my bets.

 

[day_trippr]

Regarding yet another no conclusion exbeeriment....what if both beers were oxidized?

 

[Dland]

It's a sucky question for sure. I suppose the easiest thing to do would be put in the bung before complete fermentation is done to get positive pressure, then there be no sucking.

And then you are on the road to spunding.

 

[Blazinlow86]

I'd bet the whole keg of beer that sediment in the keg is better than cold crashing without CO2 protection. Do I have evidence? No, but I'm hedging my bets.

I would NOW agree with your statement as you now mentioned you were speaking about crashing incorrectly vs not crashing at all. In the post I referenced you left that part out. I was thinking who would rather have sediment than no sediment in there finished beer lol. Cheers

 

[GPP33]

I would NOW agree with your statement as you now mentioned you were speaking about crashing incorrectly vs not crashing at all. In the post I referenced you left that part out. I was thinking who would rather have sediment than no sediment in there finished beer lol. Cheers

I'll add the caveat that it's entirely possible some beers are actually better oxidized. There are styles which have certain flavors which may be a direct result of oxidation (I'm certainly not an expert but barrel aged beers come to mind). I made a Scotch which ended up heavily oxidized due to pumping a clogged siphon, after a year the sherry hints and malt flavors were out of this world, I fear I'll never make a dark strong beer that good again. Along those lines I'm sure there's some where it wont matter and some where it'll destroy the beer in short order. At the end of the day though I'd rather have a solid oxygen free (it'll never be 100%) process which I can adjust on my terms than a process which impacts the beer in an unknown way because I'm completely ignoring a very real and important variable.

 

[Blazinlow86]

I'll add the caveat that it's entirely possible some beers are actually better oxidized. There are styles which have certain flavors which may be a direct result of oxidation (I'm certainly not an expert but barrel aged beers come to mind). I made a Scotch which ended up heavily oxidized due to pumping a clogged siphon, after a year the sherry hints and malt flavors were out of this world, I fear I'll never make a dark strong beer that good again. Along those lines I'm sure there's some where it wont matter and some where it'll destroy the beer in short order. At the end of the day though I'd rather have a solid oxygen free (it'll never be 100%) process which I can adjust on my terms than a process which impacts the beer in an unknown way because I'm completely ignoring a very real and important variable.

Definitely possible. I've always aimed to avoid any oxidization but admittedly have not done any barrel aging. I actually go a step further than crashing in the fermenter and also carb in the fermenter. I hate sediment in the keg. Doing it this way leaves basically nothing behind. I've attached a photo of a pretty hoppy wheat beer that was cold crashed for 3 days before transferring to the kegs. Cheers

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

Regarding yet another no conclusion exbeeriment....what if both beers were oxidized?

Many in this exBeeriment commented that the beer was boring, which to me is kind of what people say happens to an oxidized beer, thay is it looses its malty character.

However, it is interesting to me that 24 beer enthusiasts get together, they have them taste two beers and see if they are different enough to be reliably recognized as different; those that get the right answer say which they preferred. Vs. “My completely subjective ways of measuring what works are better and are more valid.” Even in competitions a judge is only as good as his pallet which will be muddied by the beers he/she tasted previously.

And if you go in, should you turn left or right…or right-and-three-quarters? Or, maybe, not quite? Or go around back and sneak in from behind? Simple it's not, I'm afraid you will find, for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind.

 

[divrack]

And then you are on the road to spunding.

I bet there is a road to spunding and I bet it's in England, near somewhere called grundswaith or something...

 

[day_trippr]

wrt the exbeeriment, again: both beers were cold-crashed with zero apparent effort to prevent oxygen uptake.
Only the racking procedures were different.
And, of course, no sign of any DO testing along the way.
So...My bet is one beer was somewhat more oxidized than the other.
It can be tough to decide which beer sucks more...

Cheers!

 

[divrack]

wrt the exbeeriment, again: both beers were cold-crashed with zero apparent effort to prevent oxygen uptake.
Only the racking procedures were different.
And, of course, no sign of any DO testing along the way.
So...My bet is one beer was somewhat more oxidized than the other.
It can be tough to decide which beer sucks more...

Cheers!

No need to be mean...
Hehe

 

[aprichman]

I only cold crash dry hopped beers. Otherwise the beer gets lagered in a keg and the first pint gets dumped.

 

[GPP33]

wrt the exbeeriment, again: both beers were cold-crashed with zero apparent effort to prevent oxygen uptake.
Only the racking procedures were different.
And, of course, no sign of any DO testing along the way.
So...My bet is one beer was somewhat more oxidized than the other.
It can be tough to decide which beer sucks more...

Cheers!

I’ve often wondered since they seem to cold crash most of their beers with no protection, could some of the insignificant tests have be significant had both beers not been damaged?

 

[divrack]

I’ve often wondered since they seem to cold crash most of their beers with no protection, could some of the insignificant tests have be significant had both beers not been damaged?

I'd genuinely like to see them just test completely different beers and see if they get the right one.
The other day I read one that they had added acid to one which Ended at . 018
And the other was. 012 and they didn't notice... FFS that's a completely different beer!! It's a third as sweet. Come on.

 

[GPP33]

I'd genuinely like to see them just test completely different beers and see if they get the right one.
The other day I read one that they had added acid to one which Ended at . 018
And the other was. 012 and they didn't notice... FFS that's a completely different beer!! It's a third as sweet. Come on.

That about sums up the main conclusion I’ve gotten from Brulosophy, people naturally suck at identifying and distinguishing flavors. For the most part we can just tell “beer good” or “beer not good”.

 

[Dland]

I bet there is a road to spunding and I bet it's in England, near somewhere called grundswaith or something...

Yeah, I thought about that, and even considered picking out a little spunding song on the guitar, but decided to get another beer instead.