Lessons Learned

[A1sportsdad]

Put this in the lessons learned category. I brewed yesterday. Didn’t finish till late and my wort was too warm to pitch the yeast yet. I want 66 F and it was still about 80 F. I have a chest freezer on an Inkbird I use for cold crashing and bottle storage. It’s set at 38 F. I made room to put the fermenter in there and put a thermowell and the probe in the fermenter and set the temp setpoint to 66 F. I went to bed to deal with it in the morning. Got up and the fermenter was down to 56 F. WTF.
After thinking on it for a while I finally figured it out. The Inkbird didn’t malfunction. It was all of the stuff I had in there that was already at 38 F acting like a big heat sink. Doh. By morning everything had reached an equilibrium at 56 F. Had to take the fermenter out to let it warm at room temp and took everything else out as well. It’s about 64 F now. Warm enough to pitch and let it warm on its own.

 

[hotbeer]

You probably could have pitched at the lower temperature. I don't think the yeast care whether they sit in a cold packet or a cold FV full of wort. They get going when the temps are ideal either way. Depending on your particular yeast, 80°F may have been okay if you were going to continue to let it cool to the temp you plan to maintain.

I suppose for some particular types of beer you might need to be more controlling of pitch temps. But for general purpose ales and IPA's I'm not sure it matters. That said, all my pitches except for one have been at the temp I ferment at.... 68°F give or take a degree or two. There was one time I did pitch about 75°F by mistake, but no real issues. Nothing bad or good of the resulting beer. It was beer.

 

[A1sportsdad]

You probably could have pitched at the lower temperature. I don't think the yeast care whether they sit in a cold packet or a cold FV full of wort. They get going when the temps are ideal either way. Depending on your particular yeast, 80°F may have been okay if you were going to continue to let it cool to the temp you plan to maintain.

I suppose for some particular types of beer you might need to be more controlling of pitch temps. But for general purpose ales and IPA's I'm not sure it matters. That said, all my pitches except for one have been at the temp I ferment at.... 68°F give or take a degree or two. There was one time I did pitch about 75°F by mistake, but no real issues. Nothing bad or good of the resulting beer. It was beer.

Yes, I agree I could have pitched at the cooler temp but decided to let it warm some. I would not have pitched at a temp more than 2 degrees above. I purposely ferment on the cooler side, especially when using a hefeweizen yeast. I let it go through the bulk of the fermentation cool and then let the temp rise to clean it up some.