Cold Crash - Fast or Slow?

[MattK]

What (if any) merit is there to slowly lowering the temp of your beer post fermentation, as opposed to crashing as fast as possible? I feel like I often hear people talking about crashing slowly over several days. Once fermentation is complete and after a diacetyl rest, I generally just set the temp on my controller to the lower 30s and let it chill as fast as it will go. Is this detrimental to my beer?

I was assuming that when I hear the pros talking about crashing over a few days it was just that it takes much longer to chill a larger volume due to the giant thermal mass, but I wanted to make sure I'm not doing something wrong.

Cheers!

[BDawg]

The faster you can shock the yeast, the faster it'll settle out. Cold crash is just that - like an elevator crashing into the ground floor. Let it rip.

Leaving it there is fine too. It helps the "stragglers" fall out. And, yes, your suspicions about large volumes are correct as to why the pros take longer to drop the temp.

[hoodie]

I think people who advocate dropping it slowly are mainly talking about lagers. I just don't like dropping it too fast because it freezes my airlock.

[peas_and_corn]

Big breweries that transfer to a second fermenter for conditioning use a chiller to drop the temp down as quickly as possible. So... yeah, as quick as you can do it would be recommended.

[Protesto]

As long as fermentation is done I cool that sucker down as quick as possible (it also helps to carb it up as the solubility of CO2 is greater at lower temps)

[DCBC]

Another reason a brewery might crash in stages is to give the glycol chiller a rest. A brewer I know will take it to 45 and then drop it down near freezing the next day.