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.