First drink.

[Lab Cat]

5 hours ago, MUZZY said:

I sometimes wonder if cold crash is worth doing, as I imagine refrigerating your bottles for a few days would probably do the same thing. I don't know, just thinking out loud.

After trying it a while, I've gone back to not bothering with a cold crash. Doesn't add anything for me, doesn't make my beer clearer, and just makes me take longer to bottle and get another one going...

[Marty_G]

6 minutes ago, Lab Rat said:

After trying it a while, I've gone back to not bothering with a cold crash.

I was surprised to find that among brewers I have spoken to on other forms of social media cold crashing in not done.  Personally I have changed how I crash but i still do it.  I now start a crash then at around 6 degrees transfer to a keg, add finings and store at 2 degrees until the keg is transferred to my kegger.  So I still cold crash in a fashion but the truth is it is part of my kegging process now.   

[Instigator]

5 hours ago, Otto Von Blotto said:

Never noticed any difference in carbonation times from cold crashing. I used to cold condition lagers for a month or more before bottling and they still carbonated in a couple of weeks. 

It might look like there is a lot less yeast in suspension and there is, but it's not enough to stuff carbonation up. More likely they aren't warming up enough if it's taking ages. 

I'm in Cairns, so have no lack of warming for carbonation.

I used to cold crash years ago when I was kegging and just continued doing it when I started again, even though I only bottle now. Cold crashing makes sense for kegging. I'm rethinking whether I really need it for bottling. Time for a few brews without and see how things go.

[Otto Von Blotto]

I did it because I liked the reduced amount of sediment in the bottles. It didn't really make any difference to the clarity though. A week isn't really long enough to drop chill haze out without some sort of aid.