Cold Bottle Conditioning?

dukeellington

I've been thinking lately about how I'm storing my bottles while waiting to drink them, and I've had a few theories and wanted to see does anyone know for definite or have theories of their own.

Basically, I've been brewing Belgian Dubbels, and priming with DME (generally I aim for 3.0-4..5 CO2 Volumes), and bottling in 500ml swing top bottles. Once I'm done I'll leave in a box at ~18C for two weeks or so to carb.

My question is about after carbonation, how long people store in the fridge, generally I like to drink at about 8C, a few degrees above the fridge temp, so with my last batch I only left the bottles in the fridge a short while before drinking. However now I'm thinking that bottles left a a week or so in the fridge and then allowed come up the couple of degrees taste nicer. My theory is that the fridge is lagering the beer in the bottle, allowing sediment to settle out better. Anyone have similar experience or am I imagining it?

BeerNut

Sediment will drop out faster at lower temperatures, yes.

dukeellington

Any ideas on what scale we're talking? Like would you hold bottles in the fridge days versus weeks in the warm, or is there a limit to the amount of conditioning you can achieve in the warm?

BeerNut

dukeellington wrote: »

is there a limit to the amount of conditioning you can achieve in the warm?

If by conditioning you mean carbonation, yes: there's only so much sugar for the yeast to eat. But more generally, any bottled conditioned beer will change in flavour throughout its storage time, and temperature will have an effect on that.

dukeellington

No, I didn't mean carbonation, I was talking about flavour change, I know it will change, but more asking what kind of effects you would expect based on temperature.

Carawaystick

I'd say a day in a fridge will have most effect getting the sediment to drop
Maybe 2-3 days

I'm sure someone will have blogged about this if you search -- probably in a huge (far too much)amount of detail too

I spoke to one brewer at Beoir who crash chilled his fermenter in an ice bath to clear it before racking into a corny, and always had clear beer
That sounded like only a few hours of chilling @0deg

dukeellington

Carawaystick wrote: »

I'd say a day in a fridge will have most effect getting the sediment to drop
Maybe 2-3 days

I'm sure someone will have blogged about this if you search -- probably in a huge (far too much)amount of detail too

I spoke to one brewer at Beoir who crash chilled his fermenter in an ice bath to clear it before racking into a corny, and always had clear beer
That sounded like only a few hours of chilling @0deg

Thanks for the reply, a blog that goes into it in way of the top scientific detail is exactly what I'm after! Haven't found one yet, and comments on various forums seem mainly interested in the clearing affect, although a few talk about lagering helping settle out tannins and yeast to stop them producing off-flavours. I guess there's so much variation in the optimum temp for yeast strains, and how much of any flavour constitutes an "off-flavour" in any particular style to say anything for definite.

That's interesting about the crash chilling, the recipe I've worked from called for two weeks of cool conditioning (<10degC), which I pretty much met the first time with the use of an ice bucket, but having to pop ice in before work, after work and on my way to bed for two weeks got old and I was too lazy to properly keep it up when I repeated the last two times, I kind of felt in my heart of hearts that a few hours crash should be enough but it's always hard to know. In the end both batches matched the clarity of the original, but I think were a little too sweet, but that's because I tried moving bittering hops to aroma.

I've had half my bottles in the fridge for a week and half on a shelf, so I'll do a compare this evening and let you know if I can taste a difference... should anyone be interested!

sharingan

Leave the bottles at regular temperature so the yeast can fully carbonate the priming sugar.

However chilling the beer post carbonation, especially for a day or two, will have the following effects:

- beer will drop clear
- yeast sediment will compact better, and will be less likely to be disturbed when opened
- CO2 will more readily be absorbed into the beer; it will be released slower, possibly with smaller bubbles, and give better head retention i.e. you may avoid the 'Coca Cola' head problem

I try to serve a lot of my beer from the fridge nowadays. I am especially keen to get better CO2 absorption, but my fridge space is limited.

dukeellington

sharingan wrote: »

Leave the bottles at regular temperature so the yeast can fully carbonate the priming sugar.

However chilling the beer post carbonation, especially for a day or two, will have the following effects:

- beer will drop clear
- yeast sediment will compact better, and will be less likely to be disturbed when opened
- CO2 will more readily be absorbed into the beer; it will be released slower, possibly with smaller bubbles, and give better head retention i.e. you may avoid the 'Coca Cola' head problem

I try to serve a lot of my beer from the fridge nowadays. I am especially keen to get better CO2 absorption, but my fridge space is limited.

Thanks for the reply, good to know, particularly in terms of head retention.