Chilling/Pitching Method

I've stumbled apon a nice little method that originated in procrastination for removing most of the trub from the wort before pitching for people who use kettles w/o spigots that I thought I'd share. I've been using it for lagers with wonderful results.

So, I've been getting the beer chilled to the mid 60's with my immersion chiller and not being satisfied with pitching lagers at that temperature. I've been putting the wort in a bucket and chilling overnight in the lager fridge to 48, then opening the spigot into a carboy with no hoses to let it aerate, then pitching.

Been getting really clean tasting lagers last few batches doing this, thought I'd share!

Love it mark, that's awesome!

This is what Jamil says he does also, except he chills down to 44 to pitch and then lets it come up to 47 or 48 on it's own. I've been planning on giving it a try soon. Thanks for the reminder!

I just did this with my last batch. In the warmer weather I can't get the wort past 18 deg c with immersion chiller so put my 2 fermenters in fridge overnight which brought the temp to 10, perfect for pitching lagers. I reckon pitching a larger warm would definately ruin the flavours so it is worth waiting.

I was always told to pitch the yeast as soon as possible. Leaving the wort unpitched is just asking for infection. So, is this process safe? Do you just make sure the sanitation process is extra good? I am always in high alert mode from the moment I turn the burner off until I put the air lock on. Is this better then using a strainer? I would love to get my beer to the mid 40's to pitch. Victory brewer of Prima Pils brings the wort to 35 before pitching the yeast. I would be in fear of infection all night.....or are my infection fears misplaced?

I've done it 6 times so far with no infections yet, but it does seem like it would raise the risk a bit in theory. My guess is that bacteria don't perform so great when it's cold, while the yeast thrive? Maybe someone who knows more about that kind of stuff can enlighten us. The most annoying part for me is doing a bunch of extreme beer dishwashing first thing in the morning.

Pretty cool to read Jamil does lagers this way too, though after all this time I'd think hes the kinda guy who would have cooling system than can bring his wort to 44. I mean, he even has instructions on how to build a DIY walk-in cooler.

Add me to the bandwagon here. I chill as far as I can with an immersion chiller, then place the fermenter(s) in my ferm chamber set to 7C. Once the wort has cooled to 7C, I pitch then adjust the setpoint to 8C and unplug the heater so that the wort comes to temp naturally. Seems to work for me but I'm a relative lager-noob.

Yes, this practice stresses good sanitation techniques.

This is also what I do, but since I ferment in a bucket, I just chill with my CFC to whatever temp I can get, and then place the wort and yeast flask right in the fermentation fridge.

This gets the yeast up to wort temp so there is little shock, and it's usually down to temp by the next morning, so odds are bacteria won't be a problem before the yeast get a chance to take over.