Well I have finally found a freezer that was getting tossed. I ended up purchasing a Ink Bird itc-308-wifi. I’m.so glad I went WiFi model and will explain in another post along with my keezer build.

Right now I’m using it as a temp controlled fermentation chamber and going to perform my first cold crash. Usually I cut my dip tubes on my kegs and rely on that to clear out the beer which has worked but you loose that beer at the bottom of the keg. I have the equipment now so let’s try it out.

I had brewed a True To Style Altbier from kegconnection. This is the second time brewing as it was one of my favorite beers. The direction call for a cold crash and lager for a few weeks. I plan to cold crash for for 3 days, keg and lager.

So I took my gravity reading on the Altbier and it came in at 1.010, which is what the expected final gravity. Turned down my keezer to 39 degrees. I had placed the sensor in a bottle of water for a more accurate reading in the keezer. Not sure how that will work but will keep my eye on it.

I know when you drop the temp of beer the pressure reducing and so does the liquid volume slightly. I pressured my 1 gallon keg to help off set the pressure drop. Its going to be a pain because I’ll have to keep my eye on it but I will probably add a bladder of some sort to help keep o2 out more to come on that as well.

24HR LATER(funny as I typed that I thought of Sponge-Bob) – So interesting observation, I ended up installing a make shift bladder filled with CO2 about an hour after dropping the temp of the fermenter . The entire time the temp dropped it kept positive in the air lock, which I was surprised with, as I attempted something similar before and it quickly started to go negative as the temp drop. The only thing I can figure is there was a lot of excess CO2 still in the liquid and as the temp drop it released it and also kept it positive. I questioned if it was done fermenting but I know it was done as I hit my expected OG it didn’t change for a few days.

So Impressive on the keezer as well, it pulled the wort down to 39 degree in under 2 hours. Very impressive, over shoot only by a degree and a half. Settled in nicely though. Can’t wait to really do up that project.

So after the cold crash I had decided to use my new no o2 transfer which worked out great. Between cold crashing and this method, I was able to transfer all my beer over and not picking up any trub.

My final thoughts on cold crashing is, I plan on doing this for all my beers. It’s amazing how clear the beer was and the trub packs in nice so I only grabbed a little bit of it rather than more, like I normally do.