Pitched warm :(

[grasshopper1917]

So last night about 9:30PM I was brewing a simple kit and kilo style kit. I boiled up some hops in the additional malt I was adding. Added the kit and topped with cold water but only got the wort temp down to 88. So here is basically the timeline.

Pitched 14g of coopers yeast on 88 wort (ohhh dang!)

Put the fermentor in container of cold water with a wet towel and fan on it was down to 80 by the time i went to bed at midnight. No airlock activity yet.

Got up at 7am and the fermentor was cooled and sitting steady at 68 - activity in the airlock - not going crazy but fermentation has started.

Am I going to get that summer warm weather fruity taste or do you think I got it cooled down quick enough.

Appreciate your thoughts.

 

[cubalz]

Pitching your yeast at 88 is not good. Correct temperature is around 65F. Pitching dry yeast on top of wort that hot will cause a tremendous amount of die off due to shock. You will get beer but it will not be nearly as clean as it could have been. The beer will assuredly contain a lot of fusel alcohols and esters. Leave the beer on the yeast cake longer than normal and see if that helps to clean it up a bit. It will not be a miracle cure though. My advice is to plan the brew day so you can get your wort to the correct pitching temp, proof your yeast in a slurry and pitch when your wort is around 65F and the slurry is within 10-15 degrees of that temperature to reduce the thermal shock to the yeast. Good luck!

 

[flars]

You will probably be okay with this beer if you can hold the temperature of the fermenting beer at 67°F to 69°F. 88°F is right in the temperature range Fermentis recommends for rehydrating dry yeast. Rehydrating dry yeast in wort does cause extra stress on the cell walls of the yeast which can kill the cell. The higher the OG of the beer the greater the stress. This stress on the yeast can produce some extra esters in the finished beer.

Rehydrate your yeast in spring water. Never use RO or distilled water. The lack of minerals in RO and distilled water stresses the yeast. Rehydration time should not go over 30 total minutes before pitching. Let the wort cool in the fermentor and pitch the yeast in the morning should this situation happen again.

After the most active fermentation is over in 4 to 6 days the temperature can be allowed to rise to ambient, if ambient is not over about 72°F. Keep your beer on the yeast cake for the duration. Clean up of normal off flavors produced occurs during active fermentation and after. Take a SG reading about day 10 and then a second one a few days later to check for FG.

Report back in a few weeks on how this one turned out.

 

[grasshopper1917]

Well we are in the middle of a hot spell so the ice packs melted while i was at work and wort rose to about 73 - i guess it is likely going to be just a mediocre beer. It is fermenting pretty steady now. I will have to live with it - one of the pains of summer brewing without temp controls.

 

[flars]

Well we are in the middle of a hot spell so the ice packs melted while i was at work and wort rose to about 73 - i guess it is likely going to be just a mediocre beer. It is fermenting pretty steady now. I will have to live with it - one of the pains of summer brewing without temp controls.

At an ambient temperature of 68°F this set up can drop a 1.064 wort temp 8°F.

 

[mongoose33]

I'm of the opinion that it probably won't be that bad. Pitching at 88 didn't help anything, but you got it down reasonably fast. The yeast weren't putting out a lot of production at that point so whatever ickies might have made it into the beer will be relatively few in proportion.

Keep it as low as you can (mid-60s) and you should be ok.

 

[HarborTownBrewing]

You will be just fine. You wouldn't believe the crap temperatures I fermented in when I first got started and still made really really really good beer.

Everyone here is going to freak out about 2 degrees here, 2 degrees there. Sure, it's important. But what's it matter at this point? Just provide the best conditions you can from here on and enjoy it in a month or so.

 

[the-adjunct-hippie]

See how it turns out, what's done is done. I had an IPA I had to re-pitch because I pitched at 80. It turned out great with minimal phenol.

 

[oylerck]

You'll be fine. With dry yeast you are supposed to rehydrate at 90 degrees. Did you rehydrate? If not, just imagine it's a long rehydration period.

From my experience, as long as the temp change is gradual you won't get a lot of byproducts.... I usually pitch around 80 and put in my chamber where it sits at 65 at least until it's done and I haven't tasted off flavors since I started using my ferm chamber.

 

[seatazzz]

I also think you should be fine, since you got the temp down quickly. Back before I got a decent thermometer I used my fingers to test the temperature (yeah that was smart) and pitched at well over 100...resulting in some nasty beers because I didn't get the temp down enough once the yeast woke up (and then most immediately died of shock, leaving the remainder to try and do all the work). You may wind up with some esters, but for the most part should be okay.

 

[jan_b19]

So last night about 9:30PM I was brewing a simple kit and kilo style kit. I boiled up some hops in the additional malt I was adding. Added the kit and topped with cold water but only got the wort temp down to 88. So here is basically the timeline.

Pitched 14g of coopers yeast on 88 wort (ohhh dang!)

Put the fermentor in container of cold water with a wet towel and fan on it was down to 80 by the time i went to bed at midnight. No airlock activity yet.

Got up at 7am and the fermentor was cooled and sitting steady at 68 - activity in the airlock - not going crazy but fermentation has started.

Am I going to get that summer warm weather fruity taste or do you think I got it cooled down quick enough.

Appreciate your thoughts.

Don't worry. Yeast can survive temperatures up to 120F.
It ain't healthy for the yeast and will cause a delayed fermentation due to shock you should be totally fine.
The reason people pitch at lower temps is because it's the optimal temperature for yeast cells to multiply. once above 120F (around 140) yeast dies.

Here are some temperature ranges for the people that are into this stuff:

26 C (79 F) Optimum multiplication of Yeast Achieved
27 C (81 F) - 38 C (100 F) Optimum Fermentation Range
35 C (95 F) Optimum Fermentation Temperature
> 60 C (140 F) Yeast cells Die

So like you can see there's no reason to panic.
Since it's so hot right now and the yeast was probably at room temp before pitching the shock should be minimal as well.
There's also nothing wrong with summer fruity taste, hell in some beers i just want that taste!

 

[seatazzz]

Don't worry. Yeast can survive temperatures up to 120F.
It ain't healthy for the yeast and will cause a delayed fermentation due to shock you should be totally fine.
The reason people pitch at lower temps is because it's the optimal temperature for yeast cells to multiply. once above 120F (around 140) yeast dies.

Here are some temperature ranges for the people that are into this stuff:

26 C (79 F) Optimum multiplication of Yeast Achieved
27 C (81 F) - 38 C (100 F) Optimum Fermentation Range
35 C (95 F) Optimum Fermentation Temperature
> 60 C (140 F) Yeast cells Die

So like you can see there's no reason to panic.
Since it's so hot right now and the yeast was probably at room temp before pitching the shock should be minimal as well.
There's also nothing wrong with summer fruity taste, hell in some beers i just want that taste!

Janb19, thanks for that handy chart. I did a golden ale last week that got up to at least 86 after initial pitching at 68, was worried sick it would be ruined since I planned on dumping it full of raspberries for my first real fruit ale. I didn't even get any esters out of it, tasted great at 7 days and just dumped the fruit on it yesterday and its down to 78. A lot of us worry overmuch about temperature during fermentation, but we should all remember that yeast have been around a LOT longer than homo sapiens and can survive some weird temperature fluctuations.