Cold crashing a BetterBottle

I crash in better bottles all the time.. They rarely if ever collapse. The airlock will allow the exchange of air, just make sure you have it filled correctly to avoid any suckback.

 

I think you want to use the s-shaped single piece airlock for this.

 

Why NOT use an airlock?

You are creating a problem by pluggin it up and crashing it. If you leave it alone, with an airlock on it, properly filled, it will crash, nothing gets in, nothing goes out, and your bottle doesn't suck in....

 

Well, air gets in, which includes oxygen, which is not something you want to introduce into your beer at this point.

 

Sure, I get that... but if he puts the solid bung in there, he will suck in and crush the sides, which is what he's worried about..

And get this.. if it keeps the vacuum.... when he pulls out the bung, what happens then? Oxygen gets to it.

If OP is that worried about o2 ingress then he'd crashing in a purged keg, and transferring with co2. Not worrying about sucking in the sides of his better bottle. If you plug it, you have no choice. Most people slowly crash with their airlocks still attached, and haven't reported any real issue with oxidization, nor complaining about their BB's being unusable.

 

It won't suck your airlock dry if you fill it correctly.

 

Rack to the keg. Drop the temps. Carbonate. Pour a couple pints of sludge. Force rack with CO2 from keg 1 into enclosed, sanitized, purged keg 2 through the dip tube to the bottom. Let settle a few days, pour off first pint of sludge, then your golden.

 

Missing something here. Why rack to a second keg when the first has been purged, carbed, sanitized, etc?

 

Sometimes there can be too much sludge at the bottom of the first keg to ever get a clean pour. This can happen especially if one racks from the fermenter soon after fermentation is done, but before much of the yeast, etc have fallen to the bottom. I have use this technique several times. It works great for producing a really clear lager, especially if one uses gelatin in the second keg.

 

Not using an airlock means your going to create a vacuum in there and end up having the better bottle "suck in". This seems fine if you don't mind putting un-needed stress on your fermentor. It seems like it could be dangerous doing that with a glass carboy. The s-shaped airlocks, filled properly with starsan is the way to go. The two piece ones I believe you could risk having some of the liquid get sucked in, but this won't happen with the one pieces and it sort of works the same both ways.

Of course there isn't a shortage of threads on this topic.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=airlock+for+cold+crashing