cold crashing

Drew’s Citra Saison. Finished at 1.002. Still in primary. Simple newbie question: should I cold crash or not?

I cold condition every beer I brew for at least a few days. Even wheat beers, and yes … saisons.

+1. it’s easier to transfer with minimal gunk that way. and it does seem to clean the flavor up a bit.

+1 i cold crash all-some longer than others as mentioned.

I crash everything except hefe and wit.  As for saison, it depends on the strain I use - I don’t want a turbid looking beer, but I do think saison (being a yeast driven beer) is best with a slight amount of haze. I remember using gelatin on the first saison I made and feeling it was too clean, as all the yeast obviously dropped out.

It’s French Saison.

If it has dropped fairly bright, then I would not bother cold crashing as i too like saisons with a bit of haze.  But if it is still quite yeasty, then by all means a 24-48 hr cold crash would not hurt it whatsoever.

I don’t bother crashing saisons. I too like a touch of haze.

I cold crash all of my beers… In the keg.  [emoji6]

I cold crash my belgian wheat to collect the yeast for harvesting and still have plenty of haze. Low floccing strains won’t usually drop clear just from cold crashing alone and will require some fining to drop bright. I think the main reason to cold crash is to drop the yeast out for harvesting but I think it also helps to round out the flavor of the beer. And, of course, you want to store all your beer cold (or at least cool) to preserve freshness. I personally feel that every beer, even German Wheat beers, benefit from a period of cold conditioning.

What he said.

At the very end I bring them up to 98.6º as rapidly as I can for final filtering

Took me a second.  long day

Took me a minute too. Well done, Jim.  :wink:

  • 1 at least Jim…

I don’t secondary or cold crash…(all general statements are untrue)…Just fine with gelatin and keg…pretty beer…

Do you have any idea how stressful it is to understand this when one lives in a metric world?

Since there seems to be no agreement on this subject apart from how funny Jim is, I’ll do as I pretty well please: keep the haze, and maybe cold crash 24 hours to collect as much of the yeast as possible for a new batch.

Let’s put it this way, I personally feel the best advice is to always cold condition but in reality you’re not going to go wrong either way. :wink: But if you intend to harvest yeast than I would definitely thinkk you would want to crash to drop as much yeast as possible. Also, cold crashing is a good time to check for chill haze.

agreement on this topic doesn’t = right or wrong. choose the path that works for you.

To OP, if you’ve never cold crashed before, the liquid contracting due to the cold will reverse your airlock and suck both sanitizer and room air into your system depending on what kind of system you have. You probably already know this but wanted to make sure.  First time it happened to me I was pretty surprised.  Depending on your system there are several ways to correct for this.