Cold Pitching -- good read

This really got me thinking:


http://www.brewboard.com/index.php?showtopic=26969


I still don't think it is a good idea, but this article says it is a great idea and prracticed commercialy.

very neat, im going to try this.

I did this yesterday with WLP029. My lag time was less than two hours.

What were the temps of your wort and yeast upon pitching, Permo?

Yeast was at 35 and the wort was at 65, I have literally never had a yeast startup faster. Within 30 minutes the yeast was suspended in the top half of the wort and just multiplying. Two hours and I had airlock activity, and after 10 hours I needed a blowoff tube.

huh...interesting. i read that post you linked and scrounged around the web for similar info. i'm intrigued and the theories as to why this works make sense.

i wonder about a middle ground (compared to letting the yeast sit out for a few hours, eating up their glycogen, etc) where you get the yeast up to wort temp fairly quickly by putting the yeast container in somewhat higher than wort temp water bath. maybe that would help preserve their glycogen stores and avoid the thermal shock since the temps would reach the yeast more gradually.

So i (pseudo) cold pitched yesterday and figured i'd post my results. i had a 1.5 L (1.040) stir plate starter made using a fresh vial of WLP001 which I'd cold crashed right after it fermented out. Decanted the spent wort and put the erlenmeyer in a 65F water bath swirling frequently for about 30 minutes to bring temps up a little and pitched into 63F wort (this is in contrast to what i normally do, which is let it sit out for 3-4 hours to warm up gradually).

i had airlock activity within 1 hour, 3-4 bubbles per minute within 4 hours. it's going gangbusters at 65F this morning, maybe a little stronger than i'd usually see with my typical protocol, but not anywhere needing a blow off tube or anything (5 gallons in a 6.5 carboy...rarely need a blowoff unless i pitch on a cake).

disclaimer: yes, this was not truly a cold pitch. but since the theory of why cold pitching works is that the yeast don't use up their reserves during a gradual warm up, i think i more or less stuck to the spirit of it with my approach.

I've been doing it for years and I'd say that without a doubt I get better results.

Denny,
Do you mean better than a conventional lengthy warm up of the yeast or better than what I described above?

Can you elaborate on your process, (if there's much to be said)? Do you pitch all yeasts cold?

I was chicken to do it straight up, but will do so next week.

I've always pitched cold yeast from a starter flask that has been in the fridge for a day. It's more out of convenience than a particular strategy. I always have fast starts but pitch it in wort that's about 62-65F and let it rise to finish out. There is one statement in the article that is not great advice IMO:

Q: I can't get my wort that cool with my immersion chiller. Does that mean I can't cold pitch?
A: No, you can still do it. Until recently, I used an immersion chiller and couldn't get my wort chilled to under fermentation temps. I've used the cold pitching technique in beers as warm as 79F, which I then continued to cool down with ice bottles strapped to the fermenter. Even with this continued cooling, I had lag times of only 2-4 hours.

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Yeast love warm temps. Of course he didn't have a lag time. The wort was really warm and the yeast went crazy. That doesn't mean it was great for his beer.

I've done this due to laziness on a few batches now and attributed my crazier fermentation to other not really known aspects. When I brew I grab two 20lb bags of ice at the grocery store and tend to bring my wort down to below 70 and then I have thrown cold yeast in because I often forget to warm it up.

I always "cold pitch"; it's worked great for me for the past two years.

I've done this a batch or two ago. Just pitched the yeast on the bottom of the flask that I had in the fridge. Fermenter went off like crazy.

I don't think that the warmer wort will hurt the yeast starting growth, but I think you'd want to make sure your fermenter gets down to fermentation temps pretty quickly after the yeast have had a chance to multiply up a bit. The warmer ferment temps will not help off-flavors.

BuzzCraft said:

Denny,
Do you mean better than a conventional lengthy warm up of the yeast or better than what I described above?

Can you elaborate on your process, (if there's much to be said)? Do you pitch all yeasts cold?

I was chicken to do it straight up, but will do so next week.

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Sorry, better than letting it warm up. I pitch all liquid yeasts cold, straight from the fridge to the beer. I just decant and toss it in. AFAIAC, "thermal shock" is just one more of those myths that are disproven as people learn and experiment more.

Maybe I should try this... Sounds interesting..... Any off or diffferent flavors due to shocking the critters?

Thermal shock is bad when going warm to cold, yeast don't like that. Cold to warm is fine and apparently better if faster.

So if I was using a yeast smack pack, would I take it straight from the fridge, smack it, and then add it? I'm assuming breaking the pack to add the nutrients couldn't hurt...

Or is this only recommended for people who've created a starter already, but have it cold?

mmonacel said:

So if I was using a yeast smack pack, would I take it straight from the fridge, smack it, and then add it? I'm assuming breaking the pack to add the nutrients couldn't hurt...

Or is this only recommended for people who've created a starter already, but have it cold?

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I would think that you would want to start this process a couple days before brewtime. Take pack out of fridge. Smack it. Let it do its thing at room temp. Put it back in the fridge for a day or so and then pitch it cold on brew day.

Hrmm, I'm doing a wheat beer this weekend and I want to test my blowoff setup, I'll give this a shot and report back my results

It's batch #4, obviously time for experimenting!

I have done this a few times with good result, but never had any particular purpose. Usually just forgot to pull the starter out to warm up My most recent was the Belgian Dubbel I just did. Pitched cold and it took off like a rocket, went strong for almost 3 days, blowing off like crazy.

Interesting. A few weeks ago I was getting two starters ready. They were both washed samples. One was Wyeast 3068 and one was 2112. The 3068 took off as usual, but I had a hard time getting the 2112 going. So I pitched a second jar in but didn't bother to warm it up first. The starter was going nuts an hour later. I assumed I just wasted a washed yeast jar but maybe that cold yeast is what kickstarted things. I'll be looking into this on my next batch.

tamoore said:

Maybe I should try this... Sounds interesting..... Any off or diffferent flavors due to shocking the critters?

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No, because there is no shock.

So I haven't directly pitched a White Labs vile since the second time I brewed years ago. However, I was in a rush the other day and my OG was only 1.050, well within the gravity that you can directly pitch a vile. I tried the cold pitch for the first time and got a 12 hour or so lag...ouch. You guys think that was just a lack of starter or temperature dependent? Anyone tried this with direct-vile pitch w/o a starter?

shot0rum247 said:

So I haven't directly pitched a White Labs vile since the second time I brewed years ago. However, I was in a rush the other day and my OG was only 1.050, well within the gravity that you can directly pitch a vile. I tried the cold pitch for the first time and got a 12 hour or so lag...ouch. You guys think that was just a lack of starter or temperature dependent? Anyone tried this with direct-vile pitch w/o a starter?

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That lag time is perfectly acceptable.

+1

I'd say that's par for a vial w/o a starter, particularly if it had any age on it.

Man, now I remember why I've been doing starters...that 2 hour lag time is worth it.

I tried this method with a batch I brewed yesterday...

• Made a 1.1L starter Friday morning.
• Pitched washed 2nd Generation 1056 yeast slurry (about 6 weeks old) to it Friday at about 11:30 AM
• Was on the stir plate 18 hours.
• Cold crashed to 34 degrees at or about high krausen.
• Chilled 1.053 wort to 65 degrees.
• Decanted all but a quarter liter of the liquid, swirled the yeast cake back into suspension.
• Pitched at 12:30
• Saw activity after a 7 hour lag time.

The best I've ever seen before was a two hour lag time, and that was by pitching a full 2L starter of 1272 directly at high krausen. I'm not sure I'll use this method in the future, but it's good to know that yeast can be pitched while cold and still do the job.

Well today I'm going to intentionally cold pitch I've cold pitched before but not intentionally. The starter is 2L and is going into what should be a 1.085ish peat smoked beer. Yeast is WLP028 Edingburg and will be oxygenating with airstone.

I should also let it be known that I cold pitched a 4 liter WLP001 starter into a 1.065 IBA this Monday, I had airlock activity in under an hour, and after 12 hours I needed a blowoff tube. It really seems to work well.

Well I just pitched mine I'll see how long it takes. I need to get a 5L flask it seems like 2L is small a lot of times.

The next thing you're going to tell me is that I could simply go down the street and "buy" beer. Easy? What the hell....

Well it seems to have taken off like a rocket. I had some bubble activity in the blow off jug after about two hours. The krauzen is building and will start blowing off in an hour or two is my guess.

I've been cold pitching since reading CJ's article last year. My lag times are very obviously shorter. I don't watch time it all that closely, but I'd say I notice activity within 2-6 hours. Like Denny, I pull my flask out of my fridge (~35F), decant the spent starter wort then pitch. Just one of those great tricks you learn over the years. I wouldn't do it any other way now.

I can confirm that this is a good technique and that I will continue with it.

After a dozen batch I did with cold pitch at three I had an off taste caused by a lot of esters. I have found that this happens after the second or third generation of washed yeast due to the yeast stress of pitch cold.

Before the cold pitch I had no such cases so I change my mind about that yeast pitch method and go back to the old way where I remove the washed yeast from the fridge for a few hours before it warms up to the temperature of the wort.

Rinsing is far more harmful to yeast than any thermal shock. One of the worst practices perpetuated among homebrwers based on parroted, antiquated misinformation. Yeast should be stored under the beer it made until it is repitched. I know this is a zombie thread, but that's also a zombie practice.

Thanks for resurrecting this zombie. I no chilled and it got a little cold so I pitched my yeast cold instead of letting it warm. I figured less stress since beer was cooler. Best fermentation ever. I pitch all my bread yeast cold, never an issue. So I have to try this.

applescrap said:

Thanks for resurrecting this zombie. I no chilled and it got a little cold so I pitched my yeast cold instead of letting it warm. I figured less stress since beer was cooler. Best fermentation ever. I pitch all my bread yeast cold, never an issue. So I have to try this.

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I also had a good fermentation, but my only logical explanation was why I got a beer full of esters, reading various texts, because of the yeast stress on the big temperature difference.

I'll try without a cold pitch so I'll see the results.

I pitch from the fridge. I've regularly had my lager yeasts out to a good 25 generations or so before starting a fresh culture for no particular reason. Never an issue. If you believe yeast is showing signs of stress, temperature is probably pretty low on the list of suspects. I'd look at wort composition/ nutrients, oxygenation, yeast health, and pitching rates first. And the effective pitching rate could be lower than assumed if health of the yeast is compromised, and this effect will be cumulative over generations.

Robert65 said:

I pitch from the fridge. I've regularly had my lager yeasts out to a good 25 generations or so before starting a fresh culture for no particular reason. Never an issue. If you believe yeast is showing signs of stress, temperature is probably pretty low on the list of suspects. I'd look at wort composition/ nutrients, oxygenation, yeast health, and pitching rates first. And the effective pitching rate could be lower than assumed if health of the yeast is compromised, and this effect will be cumulative over generations.

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You may be right, but I didn't have that effect until I started with a cold pitch. I did not change anything else in my procedure.