cold crashing and bottling

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keat64

keat64

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In almost 40 years of home brewing in one form or another, i'v e never cold crashed.
I currently work on the basis that if I keg, the keg will be transferred to the garage (or garage fridge in the summer), and if I bottle, I can watch the sediment creep up the neck when pouring and stop before it reaches the glass.

I usually keg these days, but with the current S30 saga, I'm bottling this one.

Having never cold crashed as such, I decided to maybe give this one a try.

I've racked the beer off in to a clean fermenter and i'm puttin this in my garage for a few days to settle a little more.

What are your thoughts on bottle carbonation after cold crashing, or should I just stick with my usual, watch the neck routine.
 
The beer will carbonate fine after cold crashing but it will likely take longer. How long depends on time spent cold crashing.

I did this with a lager I brewed and cold conditioned for 3 weeks and 1 degrees C. Took about 2 months to properly carbonate but the fizz was super fine and there was barely a hair of sediment/yeast at the bottom of the bottle.
 
The reality is very simple in my view. The longer you give it in the FV whether crash cooled or not the clearer it will be at packaging. Crash cooling merely accelerates the clearing process. And the clearer it is the the longer it will take to carb up but it gets there in the end unless you have had it in the FV for weeks in which case it might be prudent to seed it with a small quantity of fresh yeast.
 
keat64 said:
In almost 40 years of home brewing in one form or another, i'v e never cold crashed.
I currently work on the basis that if I keg, the keg will be transferred to the garage (or garage fridge in the summer), and if I bottle, I can watch the sediment creep up the neck when pouring and stop before it reaches the glass.

I usually keg these days, but with the current S30 saga, I'm bottling this one.

Having never cold crashed as such, I decided to maybe give this one a try.

I've racked the beer off in to a clean fermenter and i'm puttin this in my garage for a few days to settle a little more.

What are your thoughts on bottle carbonation after cold crashing, or should I just stick with my usual, watch the neck routine.
Click to expand...

I’m fairly new to brewing, done about 10 brews now. Mostly IPAs. I found that by not cold crashing, brewed at around 18-20C, bottled with priming sugar then left indoors at 20C I get a decent carbonation after 3-4 days, really quick, because the yeast has not been dumped entirely by cold crashing, plus the temperature remains close to brewing temperature while the bottles carbonate. After a week I then transfer bottles into garage to store. Put in the fridge for a couple of days before drinking seems to cold crashes in the bottle, yeast sediment visible in the bottle bottom.

Last two brews I cold crashed for 48 hours, primed and bottled. After a week or two there’s still almost no carbonation at all. As others have said it may take a lot longer to carb after cold crashing but I can’t wait that long. !! So from now on I won’t bother. Ale yeast that brews at around 20C especially the high flocculant stuff will be almost completely removed by cold crashing meaning it may not bottle carbonate at all or at least takes ages.
 
I did short cold crash in the end.
I racked off first to a clean FV, then transferred this to my garage, where the outside temperature was around 0 degrees for a few days.
It went in the garage on Saturday, and came back out for bottling on Tuesday evening.
There was very little in the way of additional sediment in the bottom, so I doubt that i will bother in future.

It will be interesting to see what effect this has had on the carbonation though.
 

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