Glossary
Cold break
A second protein precipitation that occurs when wort is chilled rapidly after the boil.
The faster the chill, the better the cold break, which is a large part of why breweries use plate heat exchangers rather than letting wort cool overnight. Slow cooling also leaves wort in the temperature range where spoilage organisms are most active.
Related
- Hot break — The equivalent during the boil.
More vocabulary
Arrested fermentation · Barrel ageing · Batch sparging · Biotransformation · Blending · Bottle conditioning · Bottom fermentation · Burtonisation · Cask conditioning · Centrifugation
See every term on the glossary index.
Last reviewed 2026-08-16.