How Not to crash cool

[alix101]

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That's as it looks frozen solid

[MTW]

Oh dear!

The other way (not to crash cool) is to leave it connected to a blow off solution, which I found to my cost once. Nearly half a litre of star san was sucked into my 3L starter DJ

[Kev888]

Oops! Ten out of ten for enthusiasm though.

One way to freeze whilst crash cooling is to have the (thankfully plastic) FV pushed up against the fridge's cooling plate and have the probe fall off the FV's side, dangling in the air. I partially froze one using this method - the beer was surprisingly still okay, though I wouldn't like to have harvested the yeast.

[WalesAles]

Mmmmmm! Beer Ice Lolly!

WA

[Eric]

Goodness, I knew it had been cold, but by....

What's the thinking on this advice for cooling?

[Wasp_Box]

Blimey,

Gentle warm up and see how it goes I guess.

I could do with your fridge.

[alix101]

Yes my fridge decided to turn it's self up ....its more like an icbock now ...I'll see how it warms up ...luckily it didn't smash my carboy which is glass.
I've never really given much thought Eric to the science behind crash cooling ...I just make it cold so everything drops out although not this cold.
Brewed today I felt like that brew by the end

[Kev888]

What's the thinking on this advice for cooling?

I probably agree that the cooling rate shouldn't be too rapid, if the yeast are to be maintained in optimum health for subsequent maturation and conditioning (rather than being rudely shocked), although the suggested rate seems quite slow to me. The web-page also advises cooling only to cellar-like temperatures with no mention of an intervening heavily chilled stage, it appears their aim is to manage the cell count, rather than to drop out as many as possible, although they don't say what the target count is.

There may be something to it, I find beer that hasn't been heavily chilled does seem to mature somewhat more quickly. If one doesn't chill the beer further for serving, chill haze isn't something that especially needs to be addressed either, so it works for me these days; at least with reasonably flocculant yeast, they will still settle out at cellar temperatures within the time I typically already allow for maturing. I now only try to chill heavily if the beer is likely to be served colder than usual for some reason, otherwise there doesn't seem much to be gained by it.

But.. in the past even after many days of chilling well below Murphy's recommended temperatures I can't claim to have had any actual problems with insufficient yeast. The beer has still matured and primed perfectly well. I believe that it is also not uncommon commercially to chill to near-freezing (which may be slightly below zero C) for maximum precipitation of chill-haze proteins and fastest clearing rate, shortly before FG - and yet fully expect the yeast to be able to resume work again later in the cask for carbonating etc. I can see turn-around would be important there though, so maybe they're limiting settling time rather than temperature to keep enough cells in suspension - whatever 'enough' is considered to be, anyway?

EDIT: I wouldn't have thought normal amounts of heavy chilling could drop out enough yeast to be a CAMRA-related issue, rather than a real/practical one?

[windrider]

Oh dear!

The other way (not to crash cool) is to leave it connected to a blow off solution, which I found to my cost once. Nearly half a litre of star san was sucked into my 3L starter DJ

Did this @ the weekend in a rush leaving the house and forgot to remove the blow off tube. Luckily only 1/4 a pint of starsan got sucked in to 19 litres...hopefully it won't effect it too much

[Meatymc]

I still just leave the wort in the pan covered with a towel sprayed with sanitzer. With current temperatures my next brew tonight should be cool enough for pitching by tomorrow night although the longest I've left it cooling (Summer) has been two and a half days! Haven't had a problem as yet - famous last words me thinks!!!

[orlando]

Anyone with a copy of Palmer's How To Brew, will have no doubt come across the same story, his beer was perfectly fine.