Wort is too cold, Now what?

Hey everyone! Newbie here. Brewing today and everything went great until the chilling of the wort. Cooled in a ice bath and then topped off with cold spring water that I had put in the fridge. Now the wort is 58 degrees, because I was too stupid to realize that my 80 degree cooled wort would drop that much when adding the ice water. My question...do I just wait until the wort comes back up to pitching temperature on its own, or do I pitch and suffer through a long lag time? Any ideas?

I would just pitch. Nothing bad will happen to the yeast, it will just have a reduced metabolism and thus reduced activity levels. Once the wort warms up a bit, the activity will commence. That's what I would do anyway.

Yep, what Steve said.

ditto. It should be warmed up w/i a day or 2. No worries.

Draw off a little wort and heat it up to 170 degrees and add back to the fermentor to raise the temp of the whole thing.

5 gallons @ 58 degrees

draw off 1/2 gallon

4.5 gallons @ 58 and add .5 gallon @ 170 = 5 gallons @ 69.2 degrees


You can pitch the yeast @ 58 degrees but it will shock the yeast and it may take 3 or 4 days for fermentation to start. Dangerous lag time

Thanks for the quick responses...I pitched the yeast and sealed her up tight. The ambient temp in the closet is 74 degrees, and eighteen hours later it has started bubbling.

Success! RDWHAHB really does work!!