Beer Fridge At Last

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fergi

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hi guys
well i have just scored a nice beer fridge to put in my shed,now at the moment i have 3 brews bottled.coopers draught 26 days,,,coopers pale ale 16 days and cooper heritage lager 4 days,do these need cc ,or is only the lager worth putting in the fridge.if i put the lager in it may not be gassed up enough yet or do i leave it for another couple of days to gas up then put in the fridge.how long will i keep it in there for .what difference will it make by putting any of these in the beer fridge.i have enough room in my house fridge to keep 6 bottles anyway so this fridge is just to cc my beer then i will probly turn it off when im not using it
cheers
fergi
 
This aint CCing. What you are better off doing if you want to CC, is get a 20-25 litre cube and put the beer in this and then into your fridge. Then after a few weeks, bottle.
Otherwise put the Draught and pale in the fridge(leave the lager to gas up more)and these will clear better and will be readily cold to drink when you bring them into the house.
 
fergi said:
...do these need cc ,or is only the lager worth putting in the fridge.
G'day Fergi,
As Linz correctly pointed out, the trick to Cold Conditioning is to condition the beer in bulk - ie, in a fermenter or cube, not individually. You won't see a great deal of improvement in the individual bottles, compared to bulk conditioning.

Ferment your beer as per normal. When it gets to the end of the primary fermentation, ie, you would normally bottle it at this time, gently rack the beer off the spent yeast and trub cake with a syphon (minimise the bubbles) to a cleaned and sterilised secondary fermenter with airlock and shove that in the fridge. Your lagers will improve with a few weeks at under 8C and the yeast should still cut through the more complex fermentables in the wort, to further improve the flavour profile and complexity of the beer. You can even have a go at hopping the brew when you transfer to secondary, if you so desire...
Then bottle/keg as normal after 3-4 weeks of conditioning - longer for lagers if you can. If bottling, grab the original fermenter, clean and sterilize it and then use that as the bulk priming bottling bin - it saves having to stuff around with individually priming each bottle beforehand.

You're on the right track, thinking about cold conditioning, just do it in bulk.
Cheers,
TL
 
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