Crash cooling

[BluePanda]

My first brew made in my new brew fridge is just about ready to bottle, but I was wondering about the benefits of crash cooling.
The brew is a Wherry (again ) with spray malt and has been dry hopped (hops in a bag), so I'm not unduly worried about sediment. My thoughts are that if all the yeast falls out of suspension, then there may not be enough yeast left for secondary fermentation in the bottles. From reading on here, crash cooling is quite popular so I guess that is not the case, but I'm curious.

[Monkeybrew]

Crash cooling is part of my brewing regime as I find that I end up with minimal sediment in bottles and have clear beer very quickly.

I haven't had any problems with carbonation, even when bottling a brew that looks almost crystal clear.

I bring a brew down to around 5C over the course of a couple of days, so as not to shock the yeast.

Cheers

MB

[BluePanda]

Didn't know to do it in stages - so thanks.
Can't go annoying the yeast

[Charles1968]

Crash cooling drops the yeast out prematurely, getting beer clearer faster. It won't be any clearer than beer allowed to finish more slowly though.

One thing to bear in mind is that removing yeast prematurely can leave you with a diacetyl problem - diacetyl gives beer a buttery flavour. Yeast will remove diacetyl if allowed to remain active for a few days after fermentation ends, but if you remove the yeast by crash cooling you skip this step and the diacetyl will take much longer to fade or could become permanent.

[jaroporter]

it's a good point about letting the yeast clear up off flavours. though i'd still do both steps and crash cool afterwards. of course pitching an appropriate amount of yeast (read: more than the one packet on offer) will reduce/eliminate the diacetyl/off flavours produced and allow you to speed up the process!
i've [accidently] frozen half a brew from crashcooling and still had viable yeast to carbonate bottles. not neccessarily best practise or works every time but should be reassuring when not going so extreme. let us know how you get on and any obvious differences