Cooling wort and pitching yeast question

Hi All, so since this was my first brew, I'm pretty sure that I was kinda went assbackwards on how to do everything (e.g. starting at 9:00 at night ). Anyways, here is my longwinded question/process:

I had made a partial boil (3 gallons of wort), and let 2 gallons of spring water sit outside and stay cool (in the low 30s). After adding the hot wort to the cold water, It brought the temp down to about 90 degrees. I then tried to further cool down the wort by putting it in my bathtub with cold water, however, it was around 3:00am by the time it was 80 degrees. I decided to pitch the yeast in the morning when the temp finally reached 68.

How bad was it that I waited that long to pitch the yeast?

From what I gather, I hear that letting the wart cool for a long time before pitching is not a good thing. Will this ruin my batch/cause horrendous off flavors?


Thanks for anyones response.

It won't ruin it your beer. The main reason for wanting to cool quickly and pitch enough viable yeast is so there is less time for an infection to take hold of your beer. I would say you will be fine though

Probably not bad. Generally speaking the sooner the yeast get in the wort and start working, the lower your chance of infection. But if you had clean practices then there's most likely nothing to worry about.

Thanks guys! everything was sanitized and made sure the airlock was covered. I dont think anything could have got in.

Its been a little over a week now in the primary and after taking a few whiffs from the airlock, it smells great. but i know great smell does not always correlate with taste.


I know i just need to RDW and HAHB....ha.

If you cool your boil pot in a water bath first for 10 or 15 minutes before adding it to the chilled water in the fermenter, it dramatically decreases your cooling time. Usually I'm well under 70 as soon as it's mixed with the top-off water by doing this (and pre-chilling the water).

You most likely are fine, but you want to cool as quickly as possible because your wort is most susceptible to contamination between the time it starts cooling until the yeast really takes hold. Fast cooling also encourages the cold break and you're beer is less likely to get chill haze.

i had a hard time cooling my first batch and it turned out fine

my recomendations for next time are this
buy ice and fill the sink or tub and put the boil pot or fermenter into ice right away
build a wort cooler its real simple and cheap
- buy flexable copper tubing from hardware store
- coil around container smaller than boilpot or ferementer
- figure out how to attach it to the faucet - in my case i ran vinyl tuning to a funnel and hold it with a wire tie
- optional - run extra tubing through ice before it hits the wort cooler

i made one and it cost me $15 and I can cool my wort in about 10 mins

Awesome. I cant thank you guys enough.

I love this place.


Cheers!

Adding salt to the ice water bath will speed up your cooling process. When I did 3-gallon partial boils, I would be within pitching temps in about 20 minutes.