My partial extract oatmeal stout has been in the primary fermenter for ten days now and I’m begining to think about next steps. From what I can discern from reading, cold crashing is done primarily to help clarify the beer. Although I’ve never done it with any of my other ales, I’m thinking about experimenting with it with this batch. OSG was 1.073. SG today is 1.022. I’m thinking about leaving it in the primary for another week and then racking into my 6 gallon secondary and then sticking it in the fridge (38 deg. F) for another two or three days prior to adding my priming sugar and bottling. Will the be any benefit to doing this or am I just wasting time with the time in the fridge? Will there still be enough viable yeast in solution to ensure carbonization?
The benefit will be less transferred sediment/trub, so long as you don’t foul it up by majorly disturbing the trub layer on the bottom of the fermenter when racking. So you in theory will have clear-er beer. However, would I personally do this for an oatmeal stout, which I am assuming is nearly opaque black? No i wouldn’t waste time on that, but i nice IPA or dortmunder export, yeah, I would go the extra step.
sure - unless you filter it out, there will still be enough. bear in mind, you will need to let the bottled beer sit at room temp in order to carbonate though.
good luck!
Don’t even bother with the secondary. Cold crash it in the primary if you want, then transfer to you bottling bucket. As Blatz said, just try not to disturb the trub too much. I’ll usually move the carboy/bucket to my table a few hours before I keg/bottle, to allow for that last bit of settling after moving.
[quote=“blatz, post:2, topic:14252, username:blatz”]
The benefit will be less transferred sediment/trub, so long as you don’t foul it up by majorly disturbing the trub layer on the bottom of the fermenter when racking. So you in theory will have clear-er beer. However, would I personally do this for an oatmeal stout, which I am assuming is nearly opaque black? No i wouldn’t waste time on that, but i nice IPA or dortmunder export, yeah, I would go the extra step.
Don’t know how you will get less sediment/trub transferred by putting it in the fridge after you transfer it. Cold crashing before you transfer would be they way to go. In this case it would be a waste of your time.
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huh? he’s talking about cold crashing (either in primary or secondary) before bottling. not sure what you’re missing.
sure - unless you filter it out, there will still be enough. bear in mind, you will need to let the bottled beer sit at room temp in order to carbonate though.
good luck!
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No, you will need to add yeast back to the beer. 2-3 days at 38 should drop most all of the yeast out of suspension, this works great for filtering out yeast and “clearing” the beer. If you bottle from this vessel you could rouse the yeast back into suspension while mixing in the sugar, but I don’t know how well this would work at 38 degrees.
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huh? he’s talking about cold crashing (either in primary or secondary) before bottling. not sure what you’re missing.
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??? I guess the part where he cold crashes then transfers. Still missing it 
No, you will need to add yeast back to the beer. 2-3 days at 38 should drop most all of the yeast out of suspension, this works great for filtering out yeast and “clearing” the beer. If you bottle from this vessel you could rouse the yeast back into suspension while mixing in the sugar, but I don’t know how well this would work at 38 degrees.
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I have never had a beer not carbonate after cold crashing added yeast or no. There is still plenty of yeast in suspension after 48 hours cold time.
racks to secondary, cold crashes and then transfers to a bottling bucket for packaging. not sure ???
Blatz, LOL very funny.
Mort, I refridgerated a gallon once for three days, it did not carbonate before three weeks time, at which point they were all gone. The rest of that batch was carbonated fully at about day 5. It was a 1.063 ale with us-05.
well that’s the beauty of this hobby every day is an adventure. It certainly doesn’t hurt to sprinkle a little extra yeast in at bottling time anyway.
i guess I don’t understand what the joke is - the guy is asking about cold crashing his secondary fermentor prior to bottling. I hardly use secondaries for beer outside of aging really big beers, so I guess I don’t understand why you would crash the primary and then still use a secondary vessel which I am assuming is your suggestion? its my opinion that you should cold crash before your last transfer to maximize precipitation of particulate. if he was going to crash the primary, i’d say just rack right to the bottling bucket after that - probably not much benefit to the secondary (not that i think there ever really is anyhow).
Just my opinion; trying to help this guy out.
Although I really don’t see the need to cold crash an opaque beer I’ve crashed plenty of beers to clear up to a week and have never had an issue carbonating, meaning I’ve never added additional yeast at bottling.
Granted the bottles may take a few extra days to carbonate, I’ve usually attributed this to them needing to get up to temp more so than not enough yeast.
+1. I’ve crashed and carbonated many times successfully, obviously after letting the beer warm up first. There’s plenty of yeast in suspension to do the job.
Thank you all! Your experience is most welcome and appreciated. Based on this discussion, I have decided to wait and try cold crashing on another batch where a clearer beer would be more desirable and noticeable. For this one, ill just leave it in the primary until the SG levels off, rack it into my bottling bucket, prime it and bottle it. This is now my eighth batch and I’m still havin’ fun and learning something new with each one. 
Bear in mind a fair amount of sediment will drop in the bottling bucket as well. I usually leave mine to rest for up to an hour and then bottle. I quit sweating about things like turbidity a very long time ago.
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Important to remember that even though primary fermentation is completed, cold crashing the beer in the original primary will result in sometimes dialectal or butter flavors on the way down. I always believe in removing the primary trub and yeast then going into a secondary fermentation at which time you can to a rest, then crash the temperature.
Aside from the fact that this is a dead 2 year old thread, I also don’t know where you got this fact. I’ve never experienced it.
Same here. Hundreds of batches of personal experience and I’ve never seen this happen.