Cold crashing conundrum, some brainstorming help would be appreciated

General Homebrew Discussion
1

Basically, I’m trying to come up with a strategy that would allow me to cold crash with my current setup.

I live in a very small apartment, pretty much at max capacity from an equipment perspective. I have a 2 tap kegerator and I’m working towards a brewing cadence to have at minimum one tap active. My conundrum is around how to cold crash. When I have no active kegs, this is an easy question, I just use the kegerator. The “problem” I am trying to solve is how to cold crash when I have an active keg. The kegerator cannot fit both a keg and carboy at the same time.

My amateurish thought is that I just pull out the keg for a couple nights while the carboy crashes. My concern is risks around letting the keg warm up to room temperature. Is there a risk here? Or perhaps what factors would create a risk?

Alternatively, I have tried to see if there’s some sort of portable keg cooler I could use. All I’ve really found for this solution are picnic coolers which likely wouldn’t work that well over two nights in warmish weather. Wondering if someone knows of some sort of keg cooler that might be electrically powered or whatnot.

Also possible I’m just stuck with secondary conditioning and that cold crashing will have to come with a new space. If this is so, that is fine as well. Just figured I’d see if someone had an idea.

Thanks!

2

Your idea is exactly what I’d do.  No risk at all to letting the beer warm up.

3

What Denny said. I might add that you can wrap the keg in a sleeping bag or heavy quilt/comforter/blanket and slow the warming process. Some frozen water bottles inside the wrap would help even more. It takes a while to get a full keg from room temp. to serving temp. so anything that slows the warming would make re cooling faster.

4

I’m not sure the size vessel you intend to cold crash, but, a moving container or large bucket with ice in the bottom and around the carboy/keg could work. It’s depending how long you intend to crash or keep that keg cold.

5

Can you rack to a keg and then cold-crash?

6

Thanks guys!

Glad to hear there isn’t any obvious concern with letting kegs warm up.

7

I’ve never been able to cold crash a fermenter in almost twenty years of brewing. I do what Frank suggested, cold crash in the keg.  First pint is yeasty; toss it.  If I’ve dry hopped in the fermenter, I put a nylon bag over the end of the racking cane to filter the hops.