Another way is with domotica equipment. Sensor on (or in) the fermenting vessel, smart plugs on the cooling and / or heating equipment and you could make whatever profile you basically want. Tuya would be the easiest way to set it up, home assistant more versatile, but harder to get into.
I am studying at Wheihenstephan and in the last Months i did some Foamanalysis would be interesting to put these beers to the test in a proper Foam Analyser like one of Krüss or a Steinfurth Foamanalyser
Great video. My understanding is that German Breweries favour the slow crash method to not stress the yeast while it is cleaning up and also so it is in better condition for re-pitching. This would fit in with your observations in the video
@@justthebrttrk Yeah, I agree. If doing it slowly "helps" with suckback, that would only indicate it is sucking in oxygen from a leak around the fermentation vessel as opposed to the airlock, which also is not a good thing (i.e. oxygen is bad).
I gave up doing a cold crash when not using a pressure fermenter, and my beers improved a lot as a result. The benefits of a cold crash is purely visual, and the negatives (from suck back oxidation) is all on the taste. Not a worthwhile exchange imo
@@DenkerNZ fill a mylar balloon with CO2 and attach it to your fermenter in place of the air lock. CO2 gets sucked in when cold crashing. There are other methods but this one has worked flawlessly with me for years.
Awesome vid. As some others have pointed out if you get the Rapt temp controller you should be able to automate the cold crash by however much you want and whenever. I have it and love it!
In order to automate the cold crashing you could get a Kegland RAPT temperature controller which you could set up a profile for to automate the 3ºC per 12 hours. #notSponsored
The flavor aspect. This is a supposition. That's one reason breweries and you have a conical fermenter. The cooling is normally a band in the middle of the fermenter. This allows the rapid cooling of the beer but the most of the yeast is already settled on the bottom in the cone. This provides an insulation effect of the yeast as only the top layer will get the coldest and it allows the most of the yeast to gradually cool. While the beer rapidly cools, thus protecting the beer from off flavors of the yeast cooling rapidly.
Just picked up some YVH hope. Dated bags, amazing. They are a full blown brew supply shop now. Got some golden promise shipped at a decent price. Shop around, i dare you. Haven't used the 2023 hops yet. Soon will make a double IPA. Doing some English mild and English IPA at the moment. Keg hopped and keg wood cubes. Low ABV things. 3% and 4%. Windsor dry. Nice discussion, we've heard it both ways.
Love a good west coast IPA and this was fascinating as I was also in the fast-crash camp.I have also always dry-hopped with loose pellet hops, never used a mesh back thinking that nucleation/absorption would be lessened if they're in a bag. I guess I have to run my own exbeeriment now. :D
You can automate the temperature drop if you use the InkBird WIFI temperature controller and enable the Alexa Skill. Then create an Alexa Routine that drops the temp 2 or 3C every 12 hours; the annoying part is that Alexa allows a maximum of 4 hours for a "Wait" statement, so you have to chain 3 of them in a row between each temperature.
Nice to have all the gear for a controlled experiment and useful for blokes like myself using cobbled together kit out in the shed, to see the results,
I just tried the slow cold crash to see if it would improve clarity on a wimp this last 🍺. I haven’t kegged it yet but it’s good to know what I did will make a difference in the quality of my beers 🍻. Thanks for the great content.
Nice. I love unexpectedly successful experiments. I have a Bock that is wrapping up fermentation now and was spunded to 2.5vols at the end, I’ll try the slow cold crash and maybe I’ll end up with some monster foam!
I put finnings into my keg for the first time and although the beer is now super clear, head retetion in practically zero. Maybe another exBEERiment for you, does finnings effect head retention? Very interesting, thank you.
Love this experiment. Wonder if the same applies to stouts regarding head retention. I have one so I think the rapt temp controller will work great for that stepped cold crash because you can set the temp down from your phone app wherever you may be.🤙🏻
My experience is very similar: a few brews ago I had only 1 fridge and I cold crashed by setting the controller to 2C and letting it slowly go down in temperature, my fridge is quite slow but usually 24~36h after it reached 3C externally. All my beers had AMAZING head retention (just like shown in the video). Recently I got a second much faster/powerful fridge that stays at 2C permanently and holds other kegs (thermal mass), so now my cold-crashing procedure is moving fridge from 16~24c to 2c instantly. Since then I noticed insanely terrible head retention (barely 1~2min and it's completely out) even with very very similar recipes. A few of them had a stepped cold-crash at 8c for 1~2 days but overall still terrible retention. I just started d-rest on a Munich Helles and I'll be cold-crashing it slowly just to see if I can notice a difference, I'll report results back ASAP.
I may be thinking about this wrong here, but if the beer is chilled after kegging then it’s just getting cold crashed in the keg instead of the fermenter, and as warm beer doesn’t retain co2 the same you wouldn’t be able to use a warm uncrashed beer as an accurate comparison either
I'd love to do this but i'm not sure i'm willing to add that many days to my brew cycle! A lot of beers I have sitting at like 65-70F for Diacetyl rest so 2c every 12 hours is like 8-9 days of cold crashing, yikes.
It is a ton of fun and you can still make great beer as you learn. John Palmer's book "How to Brew" is a great start! There are also LOTS of Facebook and Online groups to help!
@@JamieAMcDougall I've been brewing my own wine and mead for almost 2 years now. I tried quite bit of different things with them but beer... I feel like beer needs quite a bit of invesment, both your time and your effort for research and also brewing process itself. I think im gonna start with the simplest of beers, made with malt extract and see how it goes from there. Thanks and cheers!
@@handsomedevil7072 You can make decent beer from malt extract and enhancer with just a fermentation bucket. I got into it recently and I'm on brew #5. Bottling an ale and a lager today! ruclips.net/video/b8cLl9R5c2I/видео.html You can can do some cool stuff without tons of expensive equipment.
A really interesting experiment, that does seem to possibly align with some of my own experiences when doing a rapid cold crash. Would be interesting to see a comparison with a lager as, if I'm remembering correctly from the Yeast book, lager yeasts are more susceptible to thermal shock.
A well-done test, but I started thinking a lighter beer may have had different or more discernable results. Two reasons I thought of. Hoppy beers tend to have better foam from the hops and also with all that hoppiness the taste test was probably more difficult to catch any yeast derived off flavors. But I'm probably just grasping at straws. Cheerz.
Question, when you said you added pressure to account to the negative pressure build up, what do you mean exactly? I recently bought a new stainless steel fermenter with a glycol chiller, and was wondering what could happen when I cold crash after fermentation is complete.
Do the cold crash improve the head retention? If the same beer wasn´t crashed, how would that come out? Asking because I'm investigating factors in the brewing process that affect the foam crown
Wouldn’t you want to being the cold crash once the beer has reached the target cold crash temp? So one was at 30c for a week and the other only saw 30c for a day?
I wonder if it matters at all if you bottle condition your beers. After all, there's no way someone's going to cool down a bottle of beer in this manner - it will usually go from room temp to 4-6C in less than two hours
Found some claims that a slow crash to 58F (barbaric measurement), dry hopping, and then continuing the slow crash aids in reducing hop-creep and improves balance/aroma with hop-forward beers. I wonder if the slow crash portion was to help with clarity and head retention like you found. 🤔🍻
A nicely conducted experiment and an amazing video as always But it got me thinking. Should we really worship a very dense and long-lasting head in such an aromatic style as an AIPA? Sure its an essential component of a draft Czech-style lager, but it seems to be blocking a lot of aroma of an IPA
I don't understand why you did use a spunding valve here. There is a inline regulator (white one) from Kegland available which gives you stable pressure.
isnt this more about cold crashing the yeast specifically? if that's the suspected problem with head retention??.. why not just transfer the beer into a keg after fermentation and then cold crash.?
I promise I'm not being one of those guys playing Monday morning quarterback regarding the exbeeriment, but I'm just curious why a straight ahead lager wasn't chosen here instead of an IPA with wheat? Especially because that was the first thing out of Palmer's mouth about beers out in the wild with poor head retention. Also...wheat and polyphenols in that big hop load for an IPA might've masked the effect... But clearly didn't! It might even be more stark in something like a helles. Cheers!!
Any way to do this w/o a temp controller or glycol chiller? My rather entry-level kegerator has a temp setting but it’s not very accurate and I don’t trust it, honestly.
I know I’m late to the party but I’m currently drinking a “sample pint” (don’t lie, you all do this) of a beer I have lagering that I did the slow crash on. Hate to say it because I’m impatient, but the head is persisting forever, so I think there’s something to this…
6PSI is not too high. You tubing isn't giving enough resistance. Switch out to a thinner tube please and balance the line. You need the same serving pressure as to keep the carbonation constant
I would assume the same would apply to submitting bottles or cans for competition, regardless if bottling from keg or bottle conditioning. Even if you bottle from keg and keep it cold the whole time its in your possession, at some point the beer will warm up to room temp during travel then will go back into a cold fridge and quick crash. Likely any remaining yeast in suspension might secrete the lipid. And no, gelatin or biofine or even lagering will remove all yeast. So possibly needs to be filtered to be sure. As someone who bottle conditions this gets even more complicated as the amount of yeast in bottle will be greater.
It's good to see you testing something that Palmer has talked about in multiple versions of "How to Brew" over a great many years; especially as it's not just something that no one listens to, but homebrewer trends seem to be pushing homebrewers further and further away from best practice that grew out of over 100 years of lager brewing. Please test this within the context that the recommendation grew out of: traditional German Lager brewing. IPAs have SOOO many foam-positive proteins and polyphenols; let's see the results with a German Pils next time.
Why did you only fill 2 glasses? Why not fill 10 glasses of each beer? You made 10 gallons of beer man! A lot of work making the beer and cold crashing only to fall short on collecting results. You make great videos and have great content and ideas. Not all data collection has to be a triangle test.
This is a stupid experiment from the start because: 1. nobody cares about head retention. You should put 5% wheat malt in your grain bill and the head retention problem is solved. And nobody cares about the head of the beer anyway. Everyone wants hop aroma and that's it! 2. Cold crashing will suck back oxygen in your beer, so you need a CO2 system or a CO2 balloon so it's easier not to do it in the first place and not risk oxidation. When I cold crashed, I got sour beer because of it. So I would be more interested in a video about how to cold crash correctly or why cold crashing gives a Lactobacillus infection or oxidation. 3. You can skip cold crashing altogether and not risk anything. Just lager the beer for a month and it will be crystal clear.
If a beer does not have a head, very little aroma is released from it in the glass. What is inside all those little bubbles is fragrances from the beer - the hops mostly, but it can also include esters and phenolics from the yeast. Having a good head means that those aromas are much more available to the drinkers nose.
Why go through all the trouble of brewing your own if you truly believe only hop aroma matters in every case? You could just buy hop water and save a lot of time and energy, spike it with some cheap vodka if you want to get a little buzz. Many (home)brewers go through a lot of trouble to make great quality beer, and to neglect the first & last impressions a drinker will have with it - its appearance in the glass & its lacing- is frankly a shame. Also, it’s not tough to see why cold crashing could give rise to an infection: poor sanitation & beer handling practices. You’ve shown that you know how to prevent it, with some positive CO2 pressure to counteract the suckback.
1. I care. Visually, it's great. Aromatically, it matters also - bubbles capture and release aroma. I suggest you read any of Charlie Bamforth's books to get an understanding of what good foam on a beer can achieve. 2. Not if you put the beer under pressure first, or take some other measure to avoid it, as all good brewers should be doing. 3. Yes and no. You will have a different flavour profile. Preference though - not gonna argue that yours is wrong. It's fairly harsh, and extremely opinionated, to first call this a stupid experiment (thus insulting many of us who thought it was excellent), and then proceed to state your preferences as if they were facts. I guess this is the internet though, so I probably shouldn't be surprised! Hope you're enjoying a nice beer, however you like it! 😁
1. False. Many people care about head retention. 2. Just because something is difficult and you're not willing to go to the trouble to do it right, doesn't mean it is useless. Perhaps this topic is a few steps past where you're at right now, but don't shit on the content just because it doesn't fit you like a glove.
Every single professional brewer cares about head retention, head carries aroma to the nose. It’s also equally important to a beer’s presentation just like color and clarity.
This was about the most useful exbeeriment ever! Please get to Mr. Palmer's next question asap!
Cool idea. I'd love to see an exBEERiment on fermenting a West Coast IPA at a yeast's mininum reccomended temperature vs. the highest.
You can automate that with RAPT temp controller. Create a profile and enjoy the ride. Thanks for the video!
Ordering immediately!
Another way is with domotica equipment. Sensor on (or in) the fermenting vessel, smart plugs on the cooling and / or heating equipment and you could make whatever profile you basically want. Tuya would be the easiest way to set it up, home assistant more versatile, but harder to get into.
This was a cool experiment. thanks you for taking us along to learn about beer and to see what happens with cold crashing!
I am studying at Wheihenstephan and in the last Months i did some Foamanalysis would be interesting to put these beers to the test in a proper Foam Analyser like one of Krüss or a Steinfurth Foamanalyser
Great video. My understanding is that German Breweries favour the slow crash method to not stress the yeast while it is cleaning up and also so it is in better condition for re-pitching. This would fit in with your observations in the video
Interesting!!! I usually cold crash slow anyway since I’m not using a pressurized fermenter. Doing it slow helps with suck back, cheers 🍻
@@justthebrttrk Yeah, I agree. If doing it slowly "helps" with suckback, that would only indicate it is sucking in oxygen from a leak around the fermentation vessel as opposed to the airlock, which also is not a good thing (i.e. oxygen is bad).
I gave up doing a cold crash when not using a pressure fermenter, and my beers improved a lot as a result. The benefits of a cold crash is purely visual, and the negatives (from suck back oxidation) is all on the taste. Not a worthwhile exchange imo
@@DenkerNZ fill a mylar balloon with CO2 and attach it to your fermenter in place of the air lock. CO2 gets sucked in when cold crashing. There are other methods but this one has worked flawlessly with me for years.
Awesome vid. As some others have pointed out if you get the Rapt temp controller you should be able to automate the cold crash by however much you want and whenever. I have it and love it!
In order to automate the cold crashing you could get a Kegland RAPT temperature controller which you could set up a profile for to automate the 3ºC per 12 hours. #notSponsored
Martin, I don't say it enough but these "exbeeriments" are absolutely fascinating
The flavor aspect. This is a supposition. That's one reason breweries and you have a conical fermenter. The cooling is normally a band in the middle of the fermenter. This allows the rapid cooling of the beer but the most of the yeast is already settled on the bottom in the cone. This provides an insulation effect of the yeast as only the top layer will get the coldest and it allows the most of the yeast to gradually cool. While the beer rapidly cools, thus protecting the beer from off flavors of the yeast cooling rapidly.
Yes on home scale tanks like mine, most commercial unitanks have the jacket going from the cone to the very top.
Just picked up some YVH hope. Dated bags, amazing. They are a full blown brew supply shop now. Got some golden promise shipped at a decent price. Shop around, i dare you. Haven't used the 2023 hops yet. Soon will make a double IPA. Doing some English mild and English IPA at the moment. Keg hopped and keg wood cubes. Low ABV things. 3% and 4%. Windsor dry.
Nice discussion, we've heard it both ways.
Love a good west coast IPA and this was fascinating as I was also in the fast-crash camp.I have also always dry-hopped with loose pellet hops, never used a mesh back thinking that nucleation/absorption would be lessened if they're in a bag. I guess I have to run my own exbeeriment now. :D
Interesting! I've heard that a slow cold crash benefits the sensory perception of Kolsch - maybe try that style next??
You can automate the temperature drop if you use the InkBird WIFI temperature controller and enable the Alexa Skill. Then create an Alexa Routine that drops the temp 2 or 3C every 12 hours; the annoying part is that Alexa allows a maximum of 4 hours for a "Wait" statement, so you have to chain 3 of them in a row between each temperature.
Nice to have all the gear for a controlled experiment and useful for blokes like myself using cobbled together kit out in the shed, to see the results,
I just tried the slow cold crash to see if it would improve clarity on a wimp this last 🍺. I haven’t kegged it yet but it’s good to know what I did will make a difference in the quality of my beers 🍻. Thanks for the great content.
Using an Inkbird wifi 308 you can adjust the temp from your phone, anywhere, anytime. No more visits to the brewery to adjust the temp.
Well that could explain a lot … I have to check that out with my next batch
I would love to see no cold crash to cold crash comparison!
Nice. I love unexpectedly successful experiments. I have a Bock that is wrapping up fermentation now and was spunded to 2.5vols at the end, I’ll try the slow cold crash and maybe I’ll end up with some monster foam!
In BrewPiLess you can schedule a gradual temperature drop as well as many other options.
Good video, can we discuss the effect of grist resident time before mashing on flavor of final beer
I put finnings into my keg for the first time and although the beer is now super clear, head retetion in practically zero. Maybe another exBEERiment for you, does finnings effect head retention? Very interesting, thank you.
Love this experiment. Wonder if the same applies to stouts regarding head retention.
I have one so I think the rapt temp controller will work great for that stepped cold crash because you can set the temp down from your phone app wherever you may be.🤙🏻
My experience is very similar: a few brews ago I had only 1 fridge and I cold crashed by setting the controller to 2C and letting it slowly go down in temperature, my fridge is quite slow but usually 24~36h after it reached 3C externally. All my beers had AMAZING head retention (just like shown in the video).
Recently I got a second much faster/powerful fridge that stays at 2C permanently and holds other kegs (thermal mass), so now my cold-crashing procedure is moving fridge from 16~24c to 2c instantly. Since then I noticed insanely terrible head retention (barely 1~2min and it's completely out) even with very very similar recipes. A few of them had a stepped cold-crash at 8c for 1~2 days but overall still terrible retention.
I just started d-rest on a Munich Helles and I'll be cold-crashing it slowly just to see if I can notice a difference, I'll report results back ASAP.
great experiment. I wonder if fermentation vessel matters in this case and how it affects head retention from cold crashing.
Nice experiment! The same experiment including without cold crash could be interesting to compare the results with the slow cold crash beer.
I may be thinking about this wrong here, but if the beer is chilled after kegging then it’s just getting cold crashed in the keg instead of the fermenter, and as warm beer doesn’t retain co2 the same you wouldn’t be able to use a warm uncrashed beer as an accurate comparison either
I'd love to do this but i'm not sure i'm willing to add that many days to my brew cycle! A lot of beers I have sitting at like 65-70F for Diacetyl rest so 2c every 12 hours is like 8-9 days of cold crashing, yikes.
This channel is amazing. But also scares me to start making my own beer. There is so much to learn.
It is a ton of fun and you can still make great beer as you learn. John Palmer's book "How to Brew" is a great start! There are also LOTS of Facebook and Online groups to help!
@@JamieAMcDougall I've been brewing my own wine and mead for almost 2 years now. I tried quite bit of different things with them but beer... I feel like beer needs quite a bit of invesment, both your time and your effort for research and also brewing process itself. I think im gonna start with the simplest of beers, made with malt extract and see how it goes from there. Thanks and cheers!
@@handsomedevil7072 You can make decent beer from malt extract and enhancer with just a fermentation bucket. I got into it recently and I'm on brew #5. Bottling an ale and a lager today! ruclips.net/video/b8cLl9R5c2I/видео.html You can can do some cool stuff without tons of expensive equipment.
Super interesting this one really got my attention cheers 👍🍻
A really interesting experiment, that does seem to possibly align with some of my own experiences when doing a rapid cold crash.
Would be interesting to see a comparison with a lager as, if I'm remembering correctly from the Yeast book, lager yeasts are more susceptible to thermal shock.
A well-done test, but I started thinking a lighter beer may have had different or more discernable results. Two reasons I thought of. Hoppy beers tend to have better foam from the hops and also with all that hoppiness the taste test was probably more difficult to catch any yeast derived off flavors. But I'm probably just grasping at straws. Cheerz.
No cup of beer i ever had lasted 15 minutes 🤣
Question, when you said you added pressure to account to the negative pressure build up, what do you mean exactly? I recently bought a new stainless steel fermenter with a glycol chiller, and was wondering what could happen when I cold crash after fermentation is complete.
Do the cold crash improve the head retention? If the same beer wasn´t crashed, how would that come out? Asking because I'm investigating factors in the brewing process that affect the foam crown
Wouldn’t you want to being the cold crash once the beer has reached the target cold crash temp? So one was at 30c for a week and the other only saw 30c for a day?
When you said "this is about a month later" I fully expected you to show that the head is still holding out in the glass
lol
I wonder if it matters at all if you bottle condition your beers. After all, there's no way someone's going to cool down a bottle of beer in this manner - it will usually go from room temp to 4-6C in less than two hours
Found some claims that a slow crash to 58F (barbaric measurement), dry hopping, and then continuing the slow crash aids in reducing hop-creep and improves balance/aroma with hop-forward beers. I wonder if the slow crash portion was to help with clarity and head retention like you found. 🤔🍻
A nicely conducted experiment and an amazing video as always
But it got me thinking. Should we really worship a very dense and long-lasting head in such an aromatic style as an AIPA? Sure its an essential component of a draft Czech-style lager, but it seems to be blocking a lot of aroma of an IPA
I do about 3 degrees at a time but certainly not over 12 hours...just so the fridge doesn't work too hard. Cheers.
Is it 3C or 3F per 12 hours, I always thought it was F but I might be going far slower than I had to.
I don't understand why you did use a spunding valve here. There is a inline regulator (white one) from Kegland available which gives you stable pressure.
isnt this more about cold crashing the yeast specifically? if that's the suspected problem with head retention??.. why not just transfer the beer into a keg after fermentation and then cold crash.?
I promise I'm not being one of those guys playing Monday morning quarterback regarding the exbeeriment, but I'm just curious why a straight ahead lager wasn't chosen here instead of an IPA with wheat? Especially because that was the first thing out of Palmer's mouth about beers out in the wild with poor head retention. Also...wheat and polyphenols in that big hop load for an IPA might've masked the effect... But clearly didn't! It might even be more stark in something like a helles. Cheers!!
How long did you leave it at 3c before kegging?
Any way to do this w/o a temp controller or glycol chiller? My rather entry-level kegerator has a temp setting but it’s not very accurate and I don’t trust it, honestly.
I am haveing trouble finding Johns Website. Can you help?
Think I can do this with an inkbird and IFTT.
Maybe if you buy a worse cooler to cool more slowly?
So how quickly is too quickly?
I know I’m late to the party but I’m currently drinking a “sample pint” (don’t lie, you all do this) of a beer I have lagering that I did the slow crash on. Hate to say it because I’m impatient, but the head is persisting forever, so I think there’s something to this…
No sensory difference, but a visual difference. Isn't vision one of the senses?
Rapt TC along with pill can do this automaticlly
+1 for this. I set complex temp schedules for my Belgian Dark Strongs and bugger off travelling overseas for a month or 2
Let us know when you figure out how to automate the process
Wheat on the West Coast recipe, what the what....
6PSI is not too high. You tubing isn't giving enough resistance. Switch out to a thinner tube please and balance the line. You need the same serving pressure as to keep the carbonation constant
Teaching grandpa how to suck eggs here
I would assume the same would apply to submitting bottles or cans for competition, regardless if bottling from keg or bottle conditioning. Even if you bottle from keg and keep it cold the whole time its in your possession, at some point the beer will warm up to room temp during travel then will go back into a cold fridge and quick crash. Likely any remaining yeast in suspension might secrete the lipid. And no, gelatin or biofine or even lagering will remove all yeast. So possibly needs to be filtered to be sure. As someone who bottle conditions this gets even more complicated as the amount of yeast in bottle will be greater.
It's good to see you testing something that Palmer has talked about in multiple versions of "How to Brew" over a great many years; especially as it's not just something that no one listens to, but homebrewer trends seem to be pushing homebrewers further and further away from best practice that grew out of over 100 years of lager brewing.
Please test this within the context that the recommendation grew out of: traditional German Lager brewing. IPAs have SOOO many foam-positive proteins and polyphenols; let's see the results with a German Pils next time.
If anyone leaves a beer for 20 mins they should swap to shandies and just admit they don't drink beer
Why did you only fill 2 glasses? Why not fill 10 glasses of each beer? You made 10 gallons of beer man! A lot of work making the beer and cold crashing only to fall short on collecting results. You make great videos and have great content and ideas. Not all data collection has to be a triangle test.
It doesn't take me 20-30 min to finish a pint, so slow crashing isn't worth it to me.
3 degrees communist
This is a stupid experiment from the start because: 1. nobody cares about head retention. You should put 5% wheat malt in your grain bill and the head retention problem is solved. And nobody cares about the head of the beer anyway. Everyone wants hop aroma and that's it! 2. Cold crashing will suck back oxygen in your beer, so you need a CO2 system or a CO2 balloon so it's easier not to do it in the first place and not risk oxidation. When I cold crashed, I got sour beer because of it. So I would be more interested in a video about how to cold crash correctly or why cold crashing gives a Lactobacillus infection or oxidation. 3. You can skip cold crashing altogether and not risk anything. Just lager the beer for a month and it will be crystal clear.
If a beer does not have a head, very little aroma is released from it in the glass. What is inside all those little bubbles is fragrances from the beer - the hops mostly, but it can also include esters and phenolics from the yeast. Having a good head means that those aromas are much more available to the drinkers nose.
Why go through all the trouble of brewing your own if you truly believe only hop aroma matters in every case? You could just buy hop water and save a lot of time and energy, spike it with some cheap vodka if you want to get a little buzz.
Many (home)brewers go through a lot of trouble to make great quality beer, and to neglect the first & last impressions a drinker will have with it - its appearance in the glass & its lacing- is frankly a shame.
Also, it’s not tough to see why cold crashing could give rise to an infection: poor sanitation & beer handling practices. You’ve shown that you know how to prevent it, with some positive CO2 pressure to counteract the suckback.
1. I care. Visually, it's great. Aromatically, it matters also - bubbles capture and release aroma. I suggest you read any of Charlie Bamforth's books to get an understanding of what good foam on a beer can achieve. 2. Not if you put the beer under pressure first, or take some other measure to avoid it, as all good brewers should be doing. 3. Yes and no. You will have a different flavour profile. Preference though - not gonna argue that yours is wrong.
It's fairly harsh, and extremely opinionated, to first call this a stupid experiment (thus insulting many of us who thought it was excellent), and then proceed to state your preferences as if they were facts. I guess this is the internet though, so I probably shouldn't be surprised! Hope you're enjoying a nice beer, however you like it! 😁
1. False. Many people care about head retention. 2. Just because something is difficult and you're not willing to go to the trouble to do it right, doesn't mean it is useless. Perhaps this topic is a few steps past where you're at right now, but don't shit on the content just because it doesn't fit you like a glove.
Every single professional brewer cares about head retention, head carries aroma to the nose. It’s also equally important to a beer’s presentation just like color and clarity.