As a decades long brewer, and always crashing my beers before kegging, I usually leave the temp at 32 degrees for about 5 days.
But is there an ideal length of time? 1 day, 2 days, more, less?
Have I been wasting valuable time letting it sit for 5 days at 32 F?
What say you?
I find the beer gets pretty clear and the sediment pretty well packed down, depending on yeast, in only a day or two. Whether or not 5 days is a waste of time depends somewhat on whether or not you have plenty of beer on tap a head of time.
Also, if its a hoppy beer you want to drink super fresh maybe its best to get it kegged faster. If its a lager that time is essentially counting towards whatever your lagering period is.
I don’t cold crash. I let the beer stay in primary for two weeks. The last week of primary is usually in the mid 60’s. Then I keg. The kegged beer goes into the fridge at 36-37F from there so maybe I am cold crashing in the keg. Many of my beers need no further fining. They clear fast: 3-7 days. Many beers benefit from gelatin. Either way, I get crystal clear beer. I also don’t get a lot of trub in the first few pints. The first pint is cloudy. Then things clear up. Bottomline, I haven’t found the need to cold crash in the fermenter.
Edit: referring to comments below about the beer making the schedule. Indeed. Two weeks is my usual. I have a Tilt hydrometer. I don’t package if the beer has not been finished with fermentation for at least several days.
The beer makes the schedule, not the calendar. There is no set optimal amount of time.
I fermenting a newer fridge that struggles to get much below 40 F. I crash at 42 to hopefully extend its life. Three to 5 days in pretty normal for most beers to drop clear at this temperature. I almost always add gelatin when kegging, so if a beer hasn’t cleared before kegging, it’ll finish up in the keezer.
I cold condition until I need the beer. That could be several days or several weeks.
For my five gallon batches I have two beers on tap with a third beer conditioning/lagering/maturing/clearing/carbonating in the cold. When one of those two tapped kegs kicks, I move it out, move the cold conditioned beer in and brew a new batch. As soon as fermentation is complete on the new batch (usually ~6 days or so), I keg it and put it into cold condition under CO2 pressure to wait it’s turn at the tap.
If the kegged beer isn’t clear after a cpl pints due to a short conditioning (rarely), I make a call to add gelatin or let it ride depending on my experience with that particular yeast strain and whether I am using one of the two kegs I have with a floating dip tube or not.
For my small pilot batches I bottle when the fermentation is complete, directly from the fermenter, and place them back into the fermenter fridge inside a bucket (to catch any stray shrapnel and beer from a bottle bomb — which I’ve never had [emoji1696]). When I want to drink one I place it in the fridge for a cpl hrs/days/whatever.
I cold crash @ 35 for at least 3-4 days dependent on yeast so I can collect. I’ve left it sit for well over a week @ 35* just because I didn’t get to it. After its kegged, it goes into a 35* keezer for an extended period of time and its basically a continuation of cold crashing.
I don’t generally cold crash per se. My kegerator is set to 38F, so I transfer to my serving keg at the end of fermentation and put it on tap. I taste once or twice a week until it’s at its best, then it usually moves into my regular rotation. The amount of time needed to clear varies depending on various factors, but yeast strain is the primary one.
My practice has been to crash it for 4 to 5 days. Then keg, and keep at 32-35 degrees until the keg gets brought to the bar. I always use gelatin, so clearing is not a concern or an issue.
Just was wondering what, if any benefit an extended crash time would provide.
Do you remember the old movie “The Agony and the Ecstacy”? It’s centered about Michelangelo’s painting of the Sistine Chapel, which took an extended period to complete. At one point, the Pope asks Michelangelo “When will you make an end?” and he replies “When I am finished!”.
I think that applies to a lot of processes in brewing. When will mashing be done? When will boiling be done? When will fermentation be done? When will dry hopping be done? When will cold crashing be done? When will carbing be done? The answer to all: When it is finished. There’s no Grand Brewing Timekeeper who determines “finished”; it depends on a whole raft of starting conditions and brewer’s intentions. There are all kinds of “I prefer…” answers, but you’d have to stray pretty far from the mean to be “wrong”. I think the best answer is something like “Listen to the those with experience, try what interests you, and do what works best for you” (though this imprecision tweaks the soul of the Engineer in me).
Or, as Dennie would say, “How long is a piece of string?”.
I like the Goldilocks approach…not too short, not too long, just right.