What is cold crashing

[Squidmanoo7]

What is cold crash and what are the benefits?

 

[Konadog]

Here's a quick easy answer:

"Cold crashing is a process used to clarify home brewed beer by cooling it to near-freezing temperatures before bottling. Cooling the beer actually encourages yeast and other sediment suspended in the beer to flocculate (group together) and sink to the bottom. This allows you to transfer the beer out of the fermentor for bottling while leaving behind much of the sediment that would cause a haze in the finished beer."

This was taken from here.

 

[Sailingeric]

Great question :rockin: Now how to cold crash. Where do you ferment at?? I have a small chest freezer that I use and when I ready to cold crash, I will turn the temp controller down to about 35 about 3 or 4 days before I bottle, some people go longer. Once bottled and carbed, if you let the bottles sit in the fridge a couple weeks before opening, your beer should be very clear. If you dont have a fridge or freezer to put the fermentation bucket in to cold crash you can get the same results in the bottle but will have a bit more sediment on the bottom.

I now keg and I cold crash in the keg while it is carbing, then I pour about a pint or so out of the beer and pour that down the drain since it has the sediments.

 

[Squidmanoo7]

It will carb when being cold n I ferment in a closet

 

[m00ps]

it wont carb if you have the beer at fridge temps. Carbing requires yeast activity. In the fridge, the yeast will almost entirely go to sleep

 

[Clearwall]

BC requires leftover yeast with added sugars to carb...how can you ensure this if you're freezing out the yeast?

Do you need to re-introduce a yeast if you dont keg?

 

[andrewmaixner]

BC requires leftover yeast with added sugars to carb...how can you ensure this if you're freezing out the yeast?

That doesn't happen unless you mechanically filter out the yeast. Think of lagers that are held at 34F for a month or more, and they still have enough yeast in them to carbonate the bottles.

 

[Clearwall]

That doesn't happen unless you mechanically filter out the yeast. Think of lagers that are held at 34F for a month or more, and they still have enough yeast in them to carbonate the bottles.

Ok, thanks. I'm trying to make a Marzen and I've never cold-crashed and I dont have a keg setup.