BeerBorg

Cold Crash.....how long would you recommend for a cold crash?

It depends (to me) actually. Are you dry hopping this brew? If so, you will want to do that before cold crashing. Dry hopping oils are released at different temps, taking 3-7 days to get all the oils out of dry hopping.

If not dry hopping the brew, a week of cold crash after say a week in the primary and a week in a secondary. Though some will say a minimum of two days is sufficient for a cold crash. I'm sure others will chime in on this as well.

3 days is recommended. But if you are pressed for time, anything over a day can still be useful.

A day will solidify the trub. 3 days or so will allow more things to drop out of suspension, like fruit you added, or pieces of hops.

I posted this on the old boards in a similar discussion. The wide range of responses on this topic and the topic of "how long to ferment" always reminds me of this scene from Swingers:




To add something useful: In my opinion, 2 days is the minimum amount of time to do any good. What's interesting is that the more I listen to Jamil's older podcasts, the more I hear him talking about never making drastic changes to the temp for the yeast. When he chills his beer he does it slowly, over a number of days instead of just sticking the beer in a fridge and going from 66 (for example) to 34 overnight. He talks about the drastic changes shocking the yeast and causing them to excrete undesirable compounds.

I don't mean to muddy the waters, just sharing some other thoughts. FWIW, I've crashed almost all my beers straight into the fridge and not picked up any off flavors as a result. Could it be better by slowing down the crash? Who knows.

Kealia wrote: To add something useful: In my opinion, 2 days is the minimum amount of time to do any good. What's interesting is that the more I listen to Jamil's older podcasts, the more I hear him talking about never making drastic changes to the temp for the yeast. When he chills his beer he does it slowly, over a number of days instead of just sticking the beer in a fridge and going from 66 (for example) to 34 overnight. He talks about the drastic changes shocking the yeast and causing them to excrete undesirable compounds.

I don't mean to muddy the waters, just sharing some other thoughts. FWIW, I've crashed almost all my beers straight into the fridge and not picked up any off flavors as a result. Could it be better by slowing down the crash? Who knows.

Good question actually. I'm sure someone must have tried it both ways from the same brew before. Would be interesting to see the comparisons of the taste/quality of the beers doing it both ways.

I was going for 3 days but something came up and will add a couple of days, no biggie.