Homebrewers - Whats in the fermenter?

[Salvelinus]

Originally Posted by rack04

About to kick a keg of american brown ale and my blond ale is cold crashing before racking to keg.

Question about cold crashing. How do you do it? As fast as possible? Over a couple of days? I just set up a fridge that can hold a carboy, and rigged up a temp controller. I've been over-reading about yeast. I'm a dork and like the science aspect of the living thing that's making my booze for me. It sounds like there is some evidence that you risk pushing esters out of the yeast if you cold crash too fast. Is this something that might happen but just isn't an issue like hot side aeration, or is it something you take into account for and crash slowly (oxymoron).

Dark IPA I'm calling Hoppy Halloween in the fermentation chamber right now, Brown ale into my first keg (so much easier than bottling) last week, and a simcoe/chinook IPA that got dry hops 4 days ago about ready to go into my second keg. Just had the first bottle of a Founders breakfast stout clone yesterday, delicious, but I haven't ever had the original so I can't say whether I cloned it well.