Wort cooling

Just a question -- what happens if you don't chill your wort down to 70 F before you add your yeast? How much yeast will be killed at, say, 85 F? how will this affect the taste of the beer and the length of the fermentation process?

Your yeast will be stressed, but you won't kill it put it in the wort at 85 F. That's just past the upper limit for a lot of yeast strains, so I imagine some will die off, I couldn't tell you how much would though. Pitching at a high temp can also cause off flavors too.

Yeah, high fermentation will cause some off flavors and may kill off some strains of ale yeast...It's a good idea to get the initial temp down to at least 70 bc the fermentation process typically adds a few degrees of heat...I struggle with that in the hot sumemr months when my basement isn't as cool as I'd like.

All in all, though, the beer still tastes good and gets the job done.

Many dry yeasts recommend 85-95F for hydrating, but taking a liquid yeast out of the fridge & pitching it to 85F will shock the yeast and probably delay to start of fermentation 12-24 hours. IF you continue cooling after adding the yeast and bring it down to the recommended temperature within a few hours, it shouldn't matter.

What the others said. If you get your wort down to 80F or below you should be more than fine.

At temps above 80 you're gonna get a real fast fermentation which can create off flavors. Of course most yeast strains will create noticeable off flavors at that temp anyhow - I had some suprisingly fruity ale a buddy made a couple months back.. it was a bit much. Higher temps will also lead to excessive production of fusel alcohols - these are bad for you.. they won't kill you in small doses but may make hangovers worse and some brewers attribute poor head retention to their oily like composition.

The biggest problem I see with pitching at temps above 80F is that when you pitch you should aerate the beer. Generally, it's considered bad to aerate the beer after pitching if the temp is over 80F.

well, there was very little i could do with my last batch. no matter how hard i tried, i couldn't get the wort cooled down. it probably has something to do with the fact that it's 110 degrees in baltimore right now!

i'm not brewing again until i get my freezer with an external thermostat set up. i guess i could have also only boiled two gallons of wort and added three gallons of cold water, but i didn't think of that until after it was too late.

are there any negative side effects if you top off your fermenter with ice instead of just cool water?

I use PUR filtered tap water to top off my batches.

I place 4 - 1 gal water jugs in the freezer for 4-5 hours prior to brewing.

It gets the wort down into the 70s within minutes and aerates it at the same time.

homebrewer_99 said:

I use PUR filtered tap water to top off my batches.

I place 4 - 1 gal water jugs in the freezer for 4-5 hours prior to brewing.

It gets the wort down into the 70s within minutes and aerates it at the same time.

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so then you're only boiling your wort with 1 gallon of water? how have you been able to do that?

Another question along the same lines...How is the yeast affected if you cool the wort too much, say 65 degrees F and you pitch when the liquid ale yeasts recommend 70-75 degrees F for pitching?

Cheers!
-Rick

Primary: Honey Amber Ale
Secondary #1: Oatmeal Stout
Secondary #2: empty
Bottled/Aging: Octane IPA
Bottled/Drinking: American Amber Ale

joker_x said:

Another question along the same lines...How is the yeast affected if you cool the wort too much, say 65 degrees F and you pitch when the liquid ale yeasts recommend 70-75 degrees F for pitching?

Cheers!
-Rick

Primary: Honey Amber Ale
Secondary #1: Oatmeal Stout
Secondary #2: empty
Bottled/Aging: Octane IPA
Bottled/Drinking: American Amber Ale

Click to expand...

As long as you slowly bring the yeast down to the 65f temp from the higher hydration temp (if dry) you'll be fine. I've heard that recomended by some experts before. Some pitch at 62 then rasie the temp over 24 hours to the yeasts temp range.

tockeyhockey said:

so then you're only boiling your wort with 1 gallon of water? how have you been able to do that?

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1.5 gals actually. But I also do a "late boil" where I boil only 1 lb of extra light malt for 45 mins then add the remaining malt for 15 mins. If I steep 1 lb of grains I end up with a 2 gal boil.

joker_x said:

Another question along the same lines...How is the yeast affected if you cool the wort too much, say 65 degrees F and you pitch when the liquid ale yeasts recommend 70-75 degrees F for pitching? Cheers!
-Rick

Click to expand...

I would let it sit a while to try to get closer to room temp. You could try to cool off your starter with a small amount of boiled and cooled water to bring the temps closer, but I just pitch anyway and have never had any problems.

Yeah, a week ago, I cooled down my honey amber wort too much...I got it to warm up to around 68 degrees F, then I pitched a Wyeast Activator pack, and it appears to be going just fine.

Cheers!
-Rick

Primary: Honey Amber Ale
Secondary #1: Oatmeal Stout
Secondary #2: empty
Bottled/Aging: Octane IPA
Bottled/Drinking: American Amber Ale

I did the same as homebrewer 99. Started with 1.5 gals for the boil, and then cooled 3-4 gallons in the freezer to bring it up to 5. It gets the temp down pretty close to 70.