After looking through like 6 pages of posts, I didn't see what seems like a noob question and it seemed divisive in the Googly search. Should I and is it worth it to cold crash a hazy ipa?
If you can do it without o2 ingress, yes. I always crash the hops before doing a closed transfer to the serving keg.
Yes - if you can prevent suckback somehow. Another key thing (In my opinion, man) is to do a soft cold crash before your final dry hop. The reasoning is this: All the crud floating around after primary ferment, yeast, protein flocs, etc, is going to fall out of suspension eventually. If you don't drop it before your final dry hop, a lot of that hop flavor is going to sorb to that crud and fall out of suspension when you do cold crash, or when you chill it for serving. Of all the process improvements I have done for my hazies, dropping the yeast before final dry hop has, in my opinion, lead to the greatest improvement in hop character (after basic O2 avoidance that is) Also, I believe it has lead to the greatest commercial looking haze - stable, bright, non-chunky haze. Before doing this my hazies would always be half way bright by the time I was a month into the keg. Cheers !
