Hi guys. I'm kind of a newbie, but I've searched a bit and haven't found this topic mentioned a whole lot. First, some background.
I'm brewing a Paulaner Hefeweizen clone using a recipe I got from my local homebrew store. The recipe called for WLP 300 or Wyeast 3068 but I've decided to try WLP 351 instead. I made a starter for it--my very first starter--which I let sit for about 30 hours at 71-73F before pitching. (BTW, the starter just before pitching did NOT smell as good as when it came out of the vial. To be expected, I suppose.) The White Labs vial that the WLP 351 came in says:
"... Shake yeast well, open cap carefully add to 5 gallons of aerated wort or must at 70-75F. Keep at this temperature until fermentation begins. ... Keys to a quick start are good aeration and temperature over 70F. ..."
This seems to imply that we can drop the temperature after fermentation starts. Though, the vial does not mention the recommended fermentation temperature that one would drop it to. To find that, you have to go to the White Labs website, where it states that optimum fermentation temperature for WLP 351 is 66-70F.
There seems to be a pretty ingrained conventional wisdom that, for hefeweizen yeast, higher temperatures bring out more banana esters while lower temperatures result in more clove phenols. I don't smell ANY banana in a store-bought bottle of Paulaner Hefe, and I absolutely love the clove/spice taste and smell, so the clove is what I am aiming for.
Somewhere between five and nine hours after I pitched my starter, the krausen began to form, so when I noticed it at nine hours I figured fermentation had gotten off to a good start. At that point, I began to slowly (over the course of five hours) drop the surface temperature of my primary/bucket from 73F to 66F, which was my target in hopes of getting healthy amount of clove out of the yeast.
So my question: is it standard/unspoken operating procedure to start fermentation a little warm, just to get it going (as the vial instructed), and then gradually cool the primary down to your target temperature? I read somewhere that yeast prefer stable temperatures. Would a temperature shift of this magnitude, done slowly, stress or harm my yeast in any way? Do you think the warmer startup temperature was unnecessary since I had done a starter?
Thanks!
I'm brewing a Paulaner Hefeweizen clone using a recipe I got from my local homebrew store. The recipe called for WLP 300 or Wyeast 3068 but I've decided to try WLP 351 instead. I made a starter for it--my very first starter--which I let sit for about 30 hours at 71-73F before pitching. (BTW, the starter just before pitching did NOT smell as good as when it came out of the vial. To be expected, I suppose.) The White Labs vial that the WLP 351 came in says:
"... Shake yeast well, open cap carefully add to 5 gallons of aerated wort or must at 70-75F. Keep at this temperature until fermentation begins. ... Keys to a quick start are good aeration and temperature over 70F. ..."
This seems to imply that we can drop the temperature after fermentation starts. Though, the vial does not mention the recommended fermentation temperature that one would drop it to. To find that, you have to go to the White Labs website, where it states that optimum fermentation temperature for WLP 351 is 66-70F.
There seems to be a pretty ingrained conventional wisdom that, for hefeweizen yeast, higher temperatures bring out more banana esters while lower temperatures result in more clove phenols. I don't smell ANY banana in a store-bought bottle of Paulaner Hefe, and I absolutely love the clove/spice taste and smell, so the clove is what I am aiming for.
Somewhere between five and nine hours after I pitched my starter, the krausen began to form, so when I noticed it at nine hours I figured fermentation had gotten off to a good start. At that point, I began to slowly (over the course of five hours) drop the surface temperature of my primary/bucket from 73F to 66F, which was my target in hopes of getting healthy amount of clove out of the yeast.
So my question: is it standard/unspoken operating procedure to start fermentation a little warm, just to get it going (as the vial instructed), and then gradually cool the primary down to your target temperature? I read somewhere that yeast prefer stable temperatures. Would a temperature shift of this magnitude, done slowly, stress or harm my yeast in any way? Do you think the warmer startup temperature was unnecessary since I had done a starter?
Thanks!