I was just listening to some guy who coauthored the yeast book. He claimed that he found a study during his research that reports up to 30% increase in fruity ester production if you rapidly cool or cold crash at the end of fermentation as compared to gently cooling by dropping the temp a couple degrees per day. (June 3 14 Jamil Show)
Last winter I worked on lagers a bit. They got to be pretty good but still, what I called too aley, probably due to my cold crashing. When the beers were done I would set my temp at 32° and it would get there over night.
Any comments from experience on this? I’m looking forward to making this change when lager season comes around. If it’s true, I think my lagers will reach that magic level I just couldn’t find last year.
I haven’t noticed it, but maybe because I haven’t done the slow cooling method. There are many people who say it doesn’t make a difference, but I don’t know for sure.
I made a couple pilsners in the spring that came out very clean, and I didn’t step down to lagering temps. Sampled both after D-rest and put the kegs in a 32F fridge to lager.
My experience differs. I guess if you didn’t allow enough time for fermentation to fully finish and clean up it could be possible. OTOH, I have a batch of Rye IPA on tap where I did something very much like that. Hit FG in 6 days so I crashed at 40F to drop the yeast out. It had no increase in esters and actually was better than batches where I wait 3 weeks for the yeast to drop on its own.
I am learning to not trust single data points, even from notable people, especially if they don’t reference the “study”. But I might try this slow step down chilling next time I do a lager just to see if it fixes my issue. If it does, it could still be circumstantial because it won’t be a side by side.