aehernandez
Member
Hi everyone,
Very cold starter wort question. First though, the requisite story: earlier today, I made a starter for a Saison I'm brewing tomorrow evening. Everything went as planned, and even though those last few degrees of cooling were uncharacteristically difficult to reach, I finally pitched the yeast, hoping to get some nice fermentation going in anticipation of the brewday.
5 minutes later, I notice perspiration on the starter flask.
I feel the flask and it's stone cold. Long story short, after some examination, it turns out that my thermometer is somehow broken, stuck so that it will read no lower than about 76ish. In other words, I pitched tomorrow's yeast into a starter wort at (my guess) 30 degrees.
I'm posting this after searching around because I can't seem to find good info on this. First, is the yeast salvageable for tomorrow, say 6:00? If so, anybody got a good procedure for where to go from here? Is my best bet just getting a new vial of yeast? What I've done to try to correct this is let the starter flask come back to room temperature by wrapping it in a dish towel, and later, carefully placing it in a warm (90ish) water bath. Besides this, however, there is a somewhat scientific concern here: even if I was able to get the yeast up and fermenting the starter wort, is the benefit now negligible on account of these snags, and the relative short time before pitching it into the wort tomorrow?
At any rate, it's not all loss: I'd rather find out that the thermometer is broken today, than in the middle of brewing tomorrow...
Very cold starter wort question. First though, the requisite story: earlier today, I made a starter for a Saison I'm brewing tomorrow evening. Everything went as planned, and even though those last few degrees of cooling were uncharacteristically difficult to reach, I finally pitched the yeast, hoping to get some nice fermentation going in anticipation of the brewday.
5 minutes later, I notice perspiration on the starter flask.
I feel the flask and it's stone cold. Long story short, after some examination, it turns out that my thermometer is somehow broken, stuck so that it will read no lower than about 76ish. In other words, I pitched tomorrow's yeast into a starter wort at (my guess) 30 degrees.
I'm posting this after searching around because I can't seem to find good info on this. First, is the yeast salvageable for tomorrow, say 6:00? If so, anybody got a good procedure for where to go from here? Is my best bet just getting a new vial of yeast? What I've done to try to correct this is let the starter flask come back to room temperature by wrapping it in a dish towel, and later, carefully placing it in a warm (90ish) water bath. Besides this, however, there is a somewhat scientific concern here: even if I was able to get the yeast up and fermenting the starter wort, is the benefit now negligible on account of these snags, and the relative short time before pitching it into the wort tomorrow?
At any rate, it's not all loss: I'd rather find out that the thermometer is broken today, than in the middle of brewing tomorrow...