Cold crash before fermenting

Is cold crashing BEFORE fermenting possible or practical. If I cool my beer to near freezing before adding my yeast is that a good or bad thing?

Unless you let it warm back up before pitching, I’d say it’s a bad thing. Why would you want to do it anyway?

I think this is common practice in many German breweries, especially for helles. Chill it to near freezing, rack off the sediment, let warm to a few degrees below fermentation temp, then aerate and pitch yeast. I don’t see much benefit to doing it for any other styles though.

Well I didn’t go super cold. I just thought maybe it would help the particulate matter from brewing to settle out. I pitched at 60 degrees.

Did you xfer to another fermenter before pitching?

Did you xfer to another fermenter before pitching?[/quote]
Exactly, otherwise, that would negate the reason for crashing the trub and break material out.

Yes. I chilled it in the boil pot then transferred to a bucket, then pitched.

I have done this many times with success, particularly when dealing with high groundwater temps or doing a very pale or clear/straightforward beer, but I transfer to a sanitized, sealed fermenter for the chill in my ferm chamber, then transfer again to a new clean sanitized fermenter leaving the trub behind. Makes for a nice short brewday and a good way to wind up with a good slug of relatively clean yeast thats already ‘washed’. I’m planning on doing this with a brett saison that will be a starter beer for a brett IPA soon.

This is similar to ‘no chill’ brewing, for which there is a good bit of googlable information.

I am not sure of any practical benefit (or potential dangers) of chilling to way below your pitch temp, then warming back up before pitching yeast. Seems like a waste of a condenser’s time/energy to me as you will get plenty of trub precipitation with a chill from boiling to pitch temp over a long-ish period. HOWEVER, I did do this once when I forgot to set my temp controller and the wort was cooled to around 35*, which I then had to warm back up prior to pitching, and it didn’t seem to affect the beer.

Also, I chill with my IC to around 120* or so, as I’ve HEARD that hot-side aeration and SMM/DMS can be a risk if you don’t chill the wort to below 140* quickly after knockout. No verification on that.

+1