Question about kegging

[gruntre69]

I've got a corny setup.

I'm trying to move to more advanced techniques and on my last brew I went into a secondry for 5 days before kegging. For the last 2 days I put the secondary in the fridge and once cold used gelatin to aid clearing. I'm not actually sure that the gelatin made that much difference to be honest but it only had about 36 hrs to do the job before I kegged it. I needed beer for a party.

My question:

Because the corny keg only holds 19.5 litres, I always have about 3 750ml bottles left which I have been bottling and keeping sort of a dairy of brews. This time I did it after cold crashing. Does cold crashing which I believe makes yeast dormant stop my carbination in the bottles and should I bottle the 3 tallies before cold crashing in future?

 

[Bridges]

I CC my beers and only bottle. After priming and bottling I let them come back up to 18degrees or so for a few weeks and the dormant, not dead, yeast fires up and carbs the bottles nicely. Gives me nice clear tasty beers.

 

[manticle]

There'll be enough yeast in suspension to carbonate the beer if the bottles are kept warm.

 

[mkstalen]

Just remember you generally need less sugar to prime when you're bottling from cold as more CO2 has been dissolved into the beer. When you bring it back up to conditioning temps some of that will come back out and contribute to the pressure in the bottle.

Most bulk priming calculators allow for the temperature you're bottling at.

 

[wbosher]

I've found that they can sometimes take a little longer to carb up fully, maybe three weeks instead of two.

 

[manson81]

I've taken to bottling the leftovers after kegging without priming the bottle. Then when I want to drink them I chill them and force carb in the bottle with my regular old CO2 tank.

 

[GuyQLD]

Just remember you generally need less sugar to prime when you're bottling from cold as more CO2 has been dissolved into the beer. When you bring it back up to conditioning temps some of that will come back out and contribute to the pressure in the bottle.

Most bulk priming calculators allow for the temperature you're bottling at.

This is actually incorrect. The calculators will ask for the highest temp the beer was at since fermentation finished. While it is true that colder temps allow for CO2 to be more soluble unless you're fermenting in a pressurized container then your residual CO2 in solution will not increase. Once fermentation is over no more CO2 is being produced, regardless of temp. You'll under prime if you use the calculators like that.

 

[gruntre69]

Not bulk priming because it's only the left over couple of litres. From what I'm hearing here, it seems like I should just prime as normal. 2 carb drops per 750mm bottle.

Thanks for the replies!

 

[mkstalen]

Ah! Thanks for the info. Always happy to be educated.