So, I have been sharing some of my homebrew, and this has required me to bottle 5 gal of some of my batches. Since bottling 5 gal of kegged and carbonated homebrew is a hassle (and messy), I was hoping to just bottle condition like I used to. The trouble is that my process is quite different from what it had been and the two batches I have bottle-conditioned so far have been horribly over-carbonated. I now cold crash my beer and store it at near-freezing temperatures before bottling. My question is this: if I allow a beer to ferment to completion, then raise the temperature to ambient to help it clean up, and THEN cold crash, do I still need to use less sugar to get proper carbonation? I know the sugar scale Palmer published shows that a lower temperature requires less sugar, but is that true even if the beer has already had a chance to ferment out fully?
And, if anyone cold-crashes and then bottle-conditions, how much sugar do you use for a moderate-high rate of carbonated style like an American Pale Ale or a Kölsch?