Cold crashing may not be an essential stage in every homebrewer’s practice, but it’s often that way due to a lack of knowledge. Cold-crashing homebrews have many benefits and shouldn’t be overlooked as they can improve the overall quality of a brew and make the drinking experience more enjoyable.
You should cold-cash your homebrew when you want to achieve extra clarity and purity in your brew in a short amount of time. Commercial breweries use this method regularly to hasten the brewing process and deliver the beer at the right time at the right place.
Now, in this article, I will explain everything you need to know about cold crashing your homebrew with an accent on beer, but will also explain how it affects other brews such as mead or ciders if you decide to brew them one day.
What is cold crashing?
Cold crashing is a process in brewing that causes the yeast and other particles like protein to settle down after quick exposure to close-to-freezing temperature. This process clarifies brew quickly in a matter of days or less and is a popular choice in commercial breweries.
Cold crashing barely has any other purpose than clearing the beer, so it’s obvious why many homebrewers do not cold crash their homebrews.
However, commercial breweries cold-cash beer to make it ready for the logistic chain where it soon after ends up somewhere in a warehouse and later on shelves in stores and pubs.
Cold crashing can be done for any homebrew including meads, ciders, and wine to hasten the clarification process.
How to cold crash your homebrew?
To cold crash your homebrew make sure the temperature of homebrew reaches between 34°F to 40°F (1°C to 4°C) within a couple of hours. You can simply put a fermenter, keg, or bottle in a fridge to achieve this.
Depending on the ABV of your homebrew, some brews will resist cold better, but you don’t want to reach the freezing point because if the water gets frozen it may impact the taste in your homebrew and make it worse when you warm it up, so, for this reason, do not go below 34°F (°C).
You should use a thermometer to check the temperature and make it stable, but most fridges have an inbuilt thermometer so this shouldn’t be a problem.
Is cold-crashing beer necessary?
As a homebrewer, you don’t need to cold crash your homebrew but it will help you get to the clarity sooner than without it. Although there are other methods to clarify beer, cold crashing is among the best of them.
Furthermore, cold crashing won’t affect the taste or anything in your brew directly, but any brew with lots of sediment and any kind of floaties will taste differently and in the opinion of most people, the worst.
Therefore, whether you are brewing a beer, mead, or even wine, clarity is not only associated with the aesthetics but with the taste and even the texture of a brew.
This is the reason why you should always clarify your brew before you serve it and you need to use some clarifying technique that will help you get rid of unnecessary yeast and protein particles.
What beers should be cold-cashed?
Not all beer styles require the same level of clarity and sometimes brewers intentionally decide to skip the filtering process. As homebrewers, we have more options on how we want to treat each style because we don’t have demanding customers who expect a certain standard for the beer they drink.
IPA
Hazy IPA is the style of a beer where brewers intentionally skip filtering or any clarifying process that has a mission to remove the sediment, parts of the grain, herbs, and even fruits. This type of IPA shouldn’t be cold-crashed, but you can cold-crash any other IPA.
Lager
Lager is the most popular beer style that enjoys cold crashing and benefits greatly from it. The clarity and purity of lagers can’t be achieved without filtering, so cold crashing is a phenomenal method available to homebrewers when brewing a lager.
I just can’t think of a muddy, poorly filtered lagger with floaties, it makes me sick and I haven’t met a person who thinks it’s better than a purified lager.
Wheat beer
Wheat beers similar to hazy IPAs are intentionally left with chunks of yeast and protein floating within the beer. There are many commercial wheat beer breweries that use this principle, especially in Belgium.
Ales
I find cold crashing to be a great method for ales varying from stouts to American and India pale ales. For instance, I found out that the purest my stout is, the easier it goes through the throat and you simply want more of it. I brew low ABV stouts and when I serve an oatmeal stout at 50°F that’s been previously cold crashed, the only thing that could make it better is if I had an opportunity to use nitrogen with each batch to make it extra creamy.
When should you cold-cash beer? Before bottling or after bottling?
Before cold crashing your beer you need to make sure the fermentation is complete, so if you can take the gravity readings and make sure it is complete. If you don’t take gravity readings and have suspicions give your brew a few extra days to be sure the fermentation is complete.
You should cold-cash your brew before bottling because the whole purpose is to make the brew as pure as possible before you bottle it.
You can cold crash in the primary fermenter, but it is more effective to use a secondary fermenter because it will additionally filter out the sediment at the bottom, and if you dry hop it will make more sense anyway.
It’s possible to cold-cash bottled brew as well, but the unwanted particles will be still trapped in a bottle, so if you warm it up and shake it, the beer may get muddy again.
However, many homebrewers including myself keep bottles in a fridge after carbonation is done without any cold crashing, and simply by keeping them in a fridge for a week, the brew will get pretty clear.
This is not ideal though because there will be plenty of sediment at the bottom, so you have to be careful when you pour it, and most keep the bottles upstanding instead of laying on a side.
How long do you need to cold-cash homebrew?
Cold crashing can clear your beer or any other brew after 24 hours, so this is the minimum you should keep your brew in the cold crashing phase. You can keep the brew for longer, but there’s not much point in keeping it for more than a few days because if you want to condition the beer, it will mature better at warmer temperatures.
I like to cold crash my beer to purify it, then bottle and prime it at room temperature and continue conditioning at temperatures from 46.4°F to 50°F (8°C to 10°C).
Will cold crashing stop fermentation?
Cold crashing will stop fermentation temporarily, but it won’t kill the yeast. If you need to stop the brew from fermenting again there are methods to stop the yeast and cold crashing is great for controlling fermentation when you want to temporarily stop it but not kill the yeast.
When you cold crash, the yeast goes into a dormant phase, but as soon as you bring back the temperature, the yeast will awake.
Now, you shouldn’t care about yeast in your brew because it’s really difficult to completely remove it without pasteurizing or using food-grade chemicals, but if you want to back-sweet your brew, the yeast will feast once again!
If you are unaware of this you may be surprised when you accidentally produce more alcohol and don’t get the sweetness you wanted or maybe even experience bottle bombs.
Should brews like meads and ciders be cold-crashed?
Any homebrew including meads, ciders, and wine should be cold crashed because everything is better to be clear and pure except the style intentionally calls for otherwise.
My mead can have lots of particles from fruit additions, so cold crashing helps not only with the yeast and protein particles but also with fruit cells.
Can you dry hop while cold-crash?
You shouldn’t dry hop while cold crashing because cold crashing will make everything slow down and possibly hit the dormant state where chemical reactions either occur super slowly or completely stop.
You can dry hop prior to the cold crashing and even after the cold crashing.
How do I cold crash my homebrew without a refrigerator?
A refrigerator is the best way to cold crash, but if you don’t have one you can put your brew located in a carboy or fermenter in a big vessel, in a bathtub, or in a kitchen sink and add lots of ice and cold water.
If it’s winter season and there’s snow outside, this is yet another option. As you see, there’s nothing fancy about cold crashing, just make sure the temperature drops!