May have pitched too warm...

I brewed some ESB last night. I used a wort chiller to get my wort down to temp before I transfered to primary and pitched my yeast.

Used White Labs liquid English Ale yeast in the tube. I thought I had the temp down to about 78-80 degrees before I pitched but when I went to look at my thermometer after I was cleaning up it appears it was stuck at about 80 degrees no matter where it sits.

I'm thinking now that I may have pitched at about 90 degrees.

Apart from off flavors, is this temp high enough to kill the yeast? It's been about 13 hours since I pitched and there appears to be no action going on in the primary.

What would you guys do?

No, you shouldn't have killed the yeast at 90 degrees.

Even 78-80 is too high to pitch, in my opinion. I always pitch in the low-mid 60s for ales.

Just curious. Do all of you people use a dedicated fridge for fermenting? How do you keep these low temps for weeks on end? The coldest place I can keep my batch is in our server room at work where it stays about 68 degrees.

If I were at home, the lowest I could ferment would be at about 72ish...

If you brought the temperature down quickly after pitching (within a couple of hours) you shouldn't get off flavors. I've done this several times, pitched the yeast at 80 and brought the temperature down to 64 with a swamp cooler before the yeast started fermentation.

Those batches were great according to friends :shrugs:

XLT_66 said:

Just curious. Do all of you guys use a dedicated fridge for fermenting? How do you keep these low temps for weeks on end? The coldest place I can keep my batch is in our server room at work where it stays about 68 degrees.

If I were at home, the lowest I could ferment would be at about 72ish...

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Yooper is a girl. One of many girl members here. Just sayin'!

I use a dedicated chest freezer with temperature controls. The climate I'm in pretty much requires that, or a lot of changing of frozen ice bottles in a water bath to keep temps in line. Honestly, I think it is the most important piece of equipment I have.

My IR gun is saying that my primary is at about 66 degrees in it's first day of fermenting and my secondary is sitting at about 64 degrees after 3 weeks of fermenting.

Guess that'll have to do for now.

XLT_66 said:

My IR gun is saying that my primary is at about 66 degrees in it's first day of fermenting and my secondary is sitting at about 64 degrees after 3 weeks of fermenting.

Guess that'll have to do for now.

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Sounds perfect!

Sounds good to me. Good, healthy fermentation is pretty much the most important step in creating great beer. I don't have a dedicated fridge yet, but will be investing in one shortly (probably a chest freezer with temp. control).