Carbing while Cold Crashing?

My usual process involves transferring from primary into a serving keg - cold crashing the keg - transferring into a serving keg then caring. A thought just came to me, would I be able to get a jump on carbonating the brew during the cold crash or would to C02 activity disturb the gunk I’m trying to let drop?

Sure you can.

If I went to the trouble of going from keg to keg I would do it through a filter and drop the cold crashing.

Just dont carb before you filter, otherwise you’ll end up with a foamy mess. Ask me how I know  :o

I’m just glad you care!

Thanks for the advice - filtering is an interesting option but I don’t even know where to begin. Is it relatively cheap and easy?

I should add though that most of the beer I brew is meant to be hop forward - doesn’t filtration strip some of that flavor out? I know some brewers like The Alchemist avoid filtration. Then again I’m also thinking that transferring from keg to keg through the lines instead of siphoned would reduce oxygen exposure.

Filtering would drop some hoppiness, but if you think about it so does cold crashing, right?

For me, the least amount of transfer means least exposure to contamination. Also least effort.

As far as filtering, I guess it depends on how important clarity is to you. If the beer is all about hops then skip anything that removes hoppiness and drink it from opaque cups. If clarity is important then do the other.

Very true. Yea, clarity isn’t very important to me (or I wouldn’t add Oats to pale ale) but I still hope to avoid any off flavors by having too much sediment/yeast in suspension and pour a clean tasting brew.

Since filtering and cold crashing/transferring essentially serve the same purpose I guess my next questions are:

  1. Do you loose less beer by filtering? I seem to loose about ¼ gallon or so when I transfer from keg to keg.
  2. Does filtering do a significantly better job?

I think you’re complicating things:)

I cold crash in the primary, rack to keg, get it cold and then simply hook up the gas and force carb. After the first pour the beer is nice and clear regardless of the style really and I don’t lose any flavor or aroma.

I’m not sure I really see any benefit of moving a kegged beer to another keg just to serve other than adding another transfer. I’m happy with the clarity and don’t see the need to filter.

Depending on the filter, certainly. With a fine enough filter element you can strip all of the yeast out, where fining will always leave some behind.

duboman - Makes sense but cold crashing in the primary would be tougher for me since carboys/buckets don’t fit well in my kegerator. The first transfer leaves most of the gunk behind and allows me to dry hop again off most of the yeast (I dry hop x1 at the end of primary, x2 in the conditioning keg that gets cold crashed after a few days, and x3 in a container in the serving keg).

jim - Makes sense, I may look into one.

The only reason I move kegged beer to another keg is if I am transporting the beer elsewhere for an event (which seems to be the case for about half my beers).  Otherwise, I agree, it is best just to leave in the serving keg if it is going to sit in the kegerator.

+1 - often times I don’t even bother if I know the keg will have a bit of time to sit before pulling the first pint.

+2

Yea, the trouble I experienced with cold crashing/serving in the same keg was after it all settled I’d be pulling up gunk for awhile and potentially clogging the dip tube. I know theres workarounds involving shorting the tube or adding a screen but they always seemed like more work than a transfer and shortening the dip tube would result in less pints being pulled anyway. Haven’t had any oxygenation issues yet.

Gotcha, makes sense:)