Cold Conditioning
I hate being the over-excited homebrewer with a new toy, but I’m an over-excited homebrewer with a new toy. Now that I have this beer fridge, I want to use it for other purposes that just storing beer.
With one week down in the Irish Red Ale‘s primary fermentation period, I am planning to rack it to a glass carboy and cold condition it for 2 weeks in the fridge.
I have been reading that taking this step will help with the clarity and also will help with the “smoothing” out of the beer.
I would love split the batch and run an A/B test on the cold conditioning effect on the beer, but I will wait for another time. I want to get the process down without complicating it further.
I will probably set the fridge temp up to 40°F and let it hang out for 14 days before bottling. I think the Irish Red will benefit from the additional step.
With the two week stay in the fridge, I don’t think I will crash the yeast so much that bottle carbonation should be affected.
on April 27th, 2010 at 5:44 am
I had a last min trip out of town. Left 5 gallons/wpl001 @ 45 for 12 days. The carbonation is just shy of what I wanted. Since then I will let 001 go down no lower then 50.