Beer Forum

I was thinking about cooling my Belgian Ale before bottling to get more yeast to drop out and hopefully clear it up a bit. Ive never done this before ,though Ive read about it several times. What temp would suffice and for how long? Will I ALL of my yeast out of suspension, preventing adequate carbonation? If so I guess I would add champagne yeast at bottling? Thanks a million for the feedback. This is my best homebrew so far by early tastings...

If you are crashing in the carboy or bucket, I would get it as low as you could and add gelatin. That would work quicker and be more effective than crash cooling. On the other hand with crash cooling you are also extending aging the beer, for a Belgian, this could be very good. Your answer really depends on what brewing equipment you have. Since you didn't say I would guess a basement? If you can not get around 45 or lower I would just added some gelatin when its cool and bottle the next morning.

You yeast should be good as long as you had a proper primary fermentation.

While I've not done much crash cooling, I have used gelatin to clarify a Belgian. Worked beautifully, and still had enough yeast to fully carb everything, even on a 7.5% beer that was in the carboy for 3+ months in the middle of summer.

Placing your fermenter in the coolest environment you can will help you to crash cool your beer (ie fridge, chest freezer, cold garage or basement). I crash cool all of my beers around 35F for at least 48 hrs. before kegging. This helps me to rack a clearer beer into the keg for serving.

Here are some tips when cold crashing:

1. Be sure to install a one-piece s-shaped airlock instead of a three piece airlock for this process. Put just a small amount of liquid in the s-shaped airlock (I prefer starsan). The s-shaped airlock will have less of a chance of sucking the liquid back into the fermenter when the pressure changes due to the cooling of the beer.

2. If your beer is 8% or more ABV, after cold crashing you may want to consider adding some fresh yeast back to your bottling bucket simply to ensure a proper and timely carbonation. I have had issues with carbonating beers in the bottle when the alcohol levels start to rise up there because the yeast from the primary fermentation are too tired to finish the job.