I see people talking about "Cold Shock" during the secondary to clarify the beer. What does this mean? Also... I have only done four batches so far. IPA, Bells Brown Ale clone, Blue moon clone, Bell's Two Hearted Clone. All were great. I did not use Irish moss or anything else. Should I have added chemical to improve clarity.
"Cold crashing" is the technique of dropping the temperature of the beer in the fermentor to 30-40 degrees. The cold helps to coagulate proteins and encourage them to drop to the bottom due to gravity. This should only be done after fermentation is completely done. For clarity, I use whirlfloc and usually cold crash for two days and get pretty bright beer.
Cold crashing also induces the yeast flocculation. Usually I toss a whirlflock tablet into the last 15 minutes of boil, right when the immersion chiller going it. I don't really have a problem with getting clear beer after a cold crash. For some beers like porters, stouts, witbiers, lambics, etc, where clarity is not an issue, I usually skip the whirlflock and just try to avoid getting hotbreak into the beer. If I remember, I'll cold crash.
