Opps...cooked the yeast!

So I was getting ready to brew my Porter recipe this past Saturday and while I was working on my brew day schedule (yes I make notes for myself so I don't forget anything) I took my yeast out and smacked the pack. I had the brilliant idea of placing it on my external HD to get it warmed up a bit. Needless to say, I forgot to put into my notes "Don't leave the yeast on the HD you moron" and it got pretty hot. I took it off after about an hour and it was pretty warm, the package had swollen a bit but didn't anymore until I pitched it into 68 degree wort. 2 days later, no activity at all. I am certain that I killed the yeast, I ordered some today and it should arrive tomorrow.

Is wort sitting around 3 days going to be alright if you followed good sanitary procedure? I hope so because I am brewing this Porter up regardless, the wort tasted awesome and I think the beer will be great if it doesn't get infected. I don't see any signs of infection or anything, but just wondering what people think.

it'll probably be fine, as long you practiced good sanitation. get some dry yeast to have on hand for situations like this!

I think you'll be ok as long as it's been sealed up. Pitch the new yeast and go.

DeathBrewer said:

it'll probably be fine, as long you practiced good sanitation. get some dry yeast to have on hand for situations like this!

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So true...so true, I feel like a knob for not having any dry on hand. Actually ordered a few varieties of dry with this order of Wyeast London just in case this does happen again.

One good thing is that I am a sanitation madman, so I feel pretty good about it. More worried about oxidation since it didn't get a nice layer of C02 over the wort for awhile.

oxidation is not a problem until fermentation has started (or, more likely, finished)

any oxygen that gets in at this point will be eaten up by the yeast.

Pitched a viable pouch of Wyeast in yesterday afternoon and sweet, sweet fermentation was taking place this morning. No funky smells or abnormal growths on the wort before pitching so I am hopeful it will still turn out good. Hell, it's a Porter, how could it not!?

Not that anyone really cares, but this batch turned out awesome. No ill effects from the fermentation delay.

steelerguy said:

Not that anyone really cares, but this batch turned out awesome. No ill effects from the fermentation delay.

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Great to hear! Thanks for posting the results.

I'm glad it turned out so well. See, we do care
Many people ask about this same situation - send them here for proof that their beer is not ruined.

Hey this might be better suited to another thread, but when I've seen posts like this before, where the yeast got nuked or was a dud, most of the replies about waiting to re-pitch for a day or two are pretty RDMHAHB. In other words, it seems like a lot of people don't think that it will ruin the beer if you are forced to pitch (good) yeast 1 to 2 days AFTER your real brew day.

I'm not that experienced a brewer yet, but a ton of the materials I've read preach that its absolutely vital to pitch yeast just as soon as you possibly can once your wort is down below 75-80 degrees or so (I try for 65 degrees myself...).

However, if you dump hot, sterile wort into your carboy and protected it correctly with an airlock, then the wort would be good for a long time, right? I mean, lets not let it sit for 3 weeks or anything, but surely a day or two wouldn't hurt? Yet a ton of the stuff I've read seems to indicate that it will somehow get contaminated.

Also, I've read on some other forum that there was a brew shop (in Australia maybe?) that would sell you sterile wort that was packaged in air-tight plastic vessels, so you could just bring it home and dump in your yeast. A (no)-brew day, perhaps?

Has anyone done repeated batches where they intentionally or not have waited 2-5 days after brewing to pitch yeast into wort? And doing this for beers that are NOT supposed to be sour too, I should specify.

(My first post here after lurking a bit too, btw!)

A brewbud of mine ALWAYS leaves his wort to cool in the fermenter overnight. He's gone a day longer before, I think, and has never had a problem.

As long as there are no bacteria or wild yeasts in the fermenter when you seal it up, there won't be a problem. Pitching immediately is basically an insurance policy - the overwhelming numbers of yeast crowd out any bugs that might be in there.

Mostly, it comes down to how sanitary is your brew procedure.

I think the main problem is that you are not supposed to dump boiling hot liquids into a glass carboy. So it may be difficult to get "sterile" wort into the actual fermentation vessel.

What I did here was my normal procedure, after the boil hook the chiller up which was sitting in the wort for the final 10 mins of the boil to get it sterilized. I then put a towel that I soaked in some bleach water over the boil pot. Once it cools down into the mid 70's I dump the wort into the sanitized carboy through a sanitized funnel. Then the yeast goes in and the airlock goes on.

Not a whole lot of time for baddies to get in there, but it only takes a few cells in a nice sweet medium to start multiplying, pretty quick. Fortunately, when you dump many billions of yeast cells in in 48 hours or so, they quickly out compete any invaders. I'm sure it also helped that I was brewing a Porter.

So I would never let my wort sit around just because, but I think you can get away with a lot if you practice good sanitation.

Sometimes I don't get into the fermenter at the pitching temp that I want, so I just set the Ranko and let it cool down over night and pitch the next day. One time the beer got way too cold for some reason and then I had to warm it back up which took another day or so. As long as you are sanitary, pitching temps and controlled fermentations are so vital to great tasting beers.

Eastside

steelerguy said:

I then put a towel that I soaked in some bleach water over the boil pot.

. . . but it only takes a few cells in a nice sweet medium to start multiplying, pretty quick.

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FWIW It only takes a ridiculously small amount of chlorine/chloramine from bleach to reach a tastable level in your beer. A couple of drops from a bleach soaked towel would do it.

steelerguy, I think the problem with dumping hot liquid into glass only occurs if the glass is cold. If so, it could shatter, but if the carboy is room temp (or warmed up with some hot water first), then it should be fine, right? (asking here, not just telling)

And the more I think about it, if I were to plan to let the wort sit in the carboy for a day to cool, then I definitely want to pour it in very very hot (but maybe not boiling or anything like that). The hotter it is when poured in, the more likely that its heat could kill any contaminating bacteria that did manage to creep into the carboy. And I think you'd want to use a non-drilled, solid stopper to plug the carboy completely, no point using an airlock (which would only drip liquid into the hot carboy anyway).

dontman said:

FWIW It only takes a ridiculously small amount of chlorine/chloramine from bleach to reach a tastable level in your beer. A couple of drops from a bleach soaked towel would do it.

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I guess I should mention that I also wring the hell out of the towel, don't leave it sopping wet. It is dry enough that no liquid is coming out, but says moist with the vapor coming off the wort. Never had a problem doing this.

ghpeel said:

think the problem with dumping hot liquid into glass only occurs if the glass is cold.

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I don't think it is so much if the glass is cold, but the difference in temperature. So the glass being cold would not be good, but dumping 200+ degree wort into a 70 degree glass container not meant to hot liquids would scare me enough to not do it. Might be okay, but I could see bad things happening.