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The only beers I ever add yeast to for bottle conditioning are those big beers that sit for more than two months in secondary. The reasons are as you stated, tired yeast and the issue of not having enough yeast in suspension. I have crash-cooled a couple of younger ales, and not had any issues in bottle carbonation. I would be interested if anyone else had ...

I always thought of this as being a HUGE no no. But I guess not...below is from John Palmer. People often wonder about adding ice directly to the cooling wort. This idea works well if you remember a couple key points. Never use commercial ice. It can harbor dormant bacteria that could spoil your beer. Always boil the water before freezing it in ...

This is how I do all of my brews. I usually boil about 11/12L for a 20/21L batch, put a filter over the primary bucket, pour the wort in from a bit of a height to help aerate, add ice until I get the right temperature then top up with water. The "right temperature" might be a couple of degrees above / below target, depending on whether the top up water is ...

Any reduction in temperature will create a negative pressure (compared to what was before) in the fermentation vessel. The air lock is designed to work in a one-way fashion, so the only real risk is contamination of your fermentation chamber with air-lock fluid. Use a vodka in the airlock instead of starsan. In the extremely rare event that you generate ...

The only problem I can think of might be contamination or (depending on the age of your ice...) picking up off flavors from the ice. Remember that it will also dilute your wort by some (probably calculable) amount. If you're doing a concentrated boil anyway, then it would be easy enough to dump the hot wort onto your extra 2-3 gallons of ice. I ...

I'd like to chime in to provide some more info to those unfamiliar with the concept. Crash cooling is the last step before transferring the beer out of the fermenter. The point of crash cooling is to drop everything that is in suspension for a clearer beer. If you wait until after crash cool to dry hop, you're negating the reason you crash cooled in the ...