As more of a proof of concept than a true beer enhancing exercise, I am cold conditioning my honey wheat ale MACH II for 72 hours before bottling. It’s going to help get some of that yeast to settle out more…but I don’t think it’s going to clarify it much since it is a wheat beer.
I wanted to see how cool I could get my glass fermenter in the styrofoam box using water and frozen water bottles. By freezing eight .5 liter bottles of spring water (the spring water consumed…I filled them with tap water for freezing) and rotating 4 every 12 hours, I was able to get it down 25 degrees below the air temperature in my basement.
Knowing that my basement sits around 55F in the winter, I feel I can bring my fermenter’s temperature down to near freezing using this set up. Nice! This winter may be the season of lagers.
Some photos:
The lowest temperature I was able to hit was 46F… Again, if I really tried I could probably get it colder but I was just playing around.
I am going to let the beer come to room temperature before bottling to try to wake up the yeast for bottling/carbonation.
Señor Brew
You don’t have to warm up the beer before you bottle it, you’ll get enough yeast to carbonate the bottles even if it’s still chilled. Just hold the bottles at a warm temperature after you bottle it and they’ll carbonate.