A refrigerant dryer, in particular a compressed air refrigerant dryer, is provided for drying a gaseous fluid while cooling the gaseous fluid using a refrigerant. The dryer includes a pressure fluid-refrigerant agent-heat exchanger (30) in which a cooling of the gaseous fluid takes place directly or indirectly by a refrigerant conveyed in a primary loop (16), one or more refrigerant compressor/compressors (24) for operating the primary loop, and a cold accumulator (13) with an accumulator-side heat exchanger (20) which couples an accumulator discharge fluid to a cold accumulator medium (14). The pressure fluid-refrigerant agent-heat exchanger (30) and the cold accumulator (13) are fluidically connected or can be brought into fluidic connection via a discharge loop (15) for an accumulator discharge fluid. The cold accumulator (13) is arranged, relative to gravity, above the pressure fluid-refrigerant agent-heat exchanger (30), in such a manner that the heated accumulator discharge fluid is conveyed through the discharge loop (15) for cooling in the cold accumulator (13), is cooled there, and subsequently re-conveyed to the pressure fluid-refrigerant agent-heat exchanger (30).