I have a red ale in primary going on 3 weeks.
Now that I have lagering capability, I wondered if I
should cold crash it. I plan to keg it friday which will be
3 weeks. I am going to keg it. It was fermented with
Nottingham ale yeast dry. I fermented it at 60F. I just
wondered what others would do. Thanks for any input.
My SOP, which I would do in your case as well:
A) Rack to a keg
B) Dry hop if applicable
C) Chill for 24-48 hours
D) Add finings
E) Carbonate
F) Serve
Personally, I cold crash and use gelatin on everything. If you’ve had issues with cloudiness in the past, definitely cold crash. Otherwise, whatever floats your boat. :cheers:
It’s worth pointing out that you are cold crashing when you put a keg in the keezer/kegerator. It’s unnecessary to “cold crash” as a separate part of your process before racking. Just chill the keg before adding finings if you want to fight chill haze.
My standard procedure is to ferment to completion with a bit of extra time. Ales go 10-14 days. Lagers more like a month.
Then I cold-crash in the fermenter in the fridge for 2-4 days or a week if I’m tied up. Rack to a keg, and it’s already cold so the carbing up even happens faster.
But usually I’ll keg it and put it in the pipeline. Then I get busy drinkin’ to make room for it in the kegerator :mrgreen:
Harvesting yeast became a lot easier once I took the suggestion to start sanitizing my pint jars in the microwave. Half a jar brought to a boil, then capped and inverted a bit works really well. I save 2 pints/batch of yeast slurry, stored under beer with no added boiled/cooled water.
