[homoeccentricus]

At the very end I bring them up to 98.6º as rapidly as I can for final filtering

Do you have any idea how stressful it is to understand this when one lives in a metric world?

[homoeccentricus]

Since there seems to be no agreement on this subject apart from how funny Jim is, I'll do as I pretty well please: keep the haze, and maybe cold crash 24 hours to collect as much of the yeast as possible for a new batch.

[majorvices]

Since there seems to be no agreement on this subject apart from how funny Jim is, I'll do as I pretty well please: keep the haze, and maybe cold crash 24 hours to collect as much of the yeast as possible for a new batch.

Let's put it this way, I personally feel the best advice is to always cold condition but in reality you're not going to go wrong either way. But if you intend to harvest yeast than I would definitely thinkk you would want to crash to drop as much yeast as possible. Also, cold crashing is a good time to check for chill haze.

[Wort-H.O.G.]

Since there seems to be no agreement on this subject apart from how funny Jim is, I'll do as I pretty well please: keep the haze, and maybe cold crash 24 hours to collect as much of the yeast as possible for a new batch.

agreement on this topic doesn't = right or wrong. choose the path that works for you.

[trapae]

To OP, if you've never cold crashed before, the liquid contracting due to the cold will reverse your airlock and suck both sanitizer and room air into your system depending on what kind of system you have. You probably already know this but wanted to make sure.  First time it happened to me I was pretty surprised.  Depending on your system there are several ways to correct for this. 

[hopfenundmalz]

I cold crash all of my beers... In the keg. 

What he said.

At the very end I bring them up to 98.6º as rapidly as I can for final filtering

That is why we have kidneys.

[homoeccentricus]

To OP, if you've never cold crashed before, the liquid contracting due to the cold will reverse your airlock and suck both sanitizer and room air into your system depending on what kind of system you have. You probably already know this but wanted to make sure.  First time it happened to me I was pretty surprised.  Depending on your system there are several ways to correct for this.

I have already cold crashed before, but have never noticed this. Maybe that's why all my beers suck  But yes, please do tell how to avoid this...

[JT]

Replace the airlock with aluminum foil.  Or, if using a blowoff tube make sure there isn't enough sanitizer in the jar to make it up the tube and in your fermenter.  Or, cold crash in your keg. 

[trapae]

If you have a conical, replace the blow off tube with the CO2 input set at 1PSI so as it sucks and it's just sips on CO2 and you still have your blanket.  For a while when I was using a carbon, I would take one of those kids big punchy balloons, wash it and sterilize it inside with starsan, and then fill it with CO2. I would then just take off my air lock and put the balloon on carboy so as the fluid compresses it would decrease the balloon size.

[Stevie]

S-locks will work the same as foil, and both allow outside air in. I like solid stoppers, but 90% of the time I go straight to the keg.

[HoosierBrew]

Crashing in the keg for me.

[majorvices]

The small amount of air sucked through the airlock will be negligible. I just don't think it it worry worthy. The beer should still be full of co2 and that will be continuously coming out of solution after temps have stabilized.

[homoeccentricus]

I still bottle so no cold crashing in the keg for me. I have an s-lock with very little star san in it. I'm going to cold crash for 24 hours, and check whether anything funny happens. It's a saison, not Dom Perignon!

[JT]

Yep, I forgot about the S lock.  As the liquid gets sucked back if  there isn't enough to make it to the end it will fall back down into the airlock and not get in your beer.  Personally I wouldn't crash a saison, but it won't hurt the beer either. 

[Black Sands Brewery & Supply]

Since there seems to be no agreement on this subject apart from how funny Jim is, I'll do as I pretty well please: keep the haze, and maybe cold crash 24 hours to collect as much of the yeast as possible for a new batch.

agreement on this topic doesn't = right or wrong. choose the path that works for you.

+1 it's really up to you. I used 3711 all the time and it seems to flock out very well so I tend to skip a cold crash of the carboy and let it clean up in the keg. However cold crashing the carboy on other beers/yeasts is a great technique if you can do it. Nothing bad has ever happened to beers that I've cold crashed.

For that photo I'd skip the crash it looks pretty clear to me.