Can I pitch yeast at higher temps if I'm quickly cooling or should I wait to pitch?

[catalanotte]

I'll suggest recirculation back into the pot for a while at full speed, then going to the fermenter. What final temperature are you hoping to achieve? Theres going to be diminishing returns as temps near the source water temp. I still think you ought to be doing better than 80 with 68 degree source water when going that slow. That's just efficiency of the product though. It sounds like you've tried everything you can assuming a single pass.

All Ive got to suggest is recirculation to a certain temp, then single pass. Maybe factor in a prechiller without a pump, or pumping pure ice water.

Would like to get to at least 72, understanding that I am limited to a few degrees above ground water temp without the use of added ice, which I’d like to avoid. Will try to recirculate down near low hundreds and then see if I can hit temp into the fermentor.

 

[Jtvann]

Would like to get to at least 72, understanding that I am limited to a few degrees above ground water temp without the use of added ice, which I’d like to avoid. Will try to recirculate down near low hundreds and then see if I can hit temp into the fermentor.

Theres only so much that the chiller is going to chill. If you knock down the upper limit by recirculation, you might get closer to your goal. With recirculation, you dont need to throttle the wort speed down.

To me, recirculation is about the only apples to apples comparison that I can think of between immersion vs counterflow vs plate. You should use well less than 100 gallons though. If I had to guess, I'd approximate it around 15-30 gallons.

 

[kloppofthekop]

In summer I generally stop cooling around 75F since it takes so long to cool any more. It takes my chest freezer fermentation chamber less than a hour to lower the temp to the low 60’s where I like to start fermentation. Should I wait to add the yeast until it’s chilled completely or is it okay to add the yeast at 75 knowing it will quickly cool to the right temp?

Mine started at 28c (82.4f) and it took an hour to cool to 24c (75.2f), its fermenting at a steady 24c now and as I am a new home brewer I am concerned it wont work as it says to get it to 20c. If it doesn't work I will wait until cooler weather to brew again

 

[jimyoung]

If I think about it, I fill my 20L bucket nearly twice to chill 5gal, and my groundwater is cooler, so that's 40L or about 8/9 gal. My immersion chiller is homemade and has a small inner coil and wide outter one, but it's not very deep. I run it really slow and agitate the chiller constantly, and it still takes >20 minutes to get down close to the tapwater temp.

 

[Joshua Hughes]

This thread makes me happy do 1 gallon batches lol. I’ve pitched at 75 while Temps were going down with no off flavors I can attribute to it. But that is a slurry that sits out the entire brew time so it is almost around that temp itself

 

[Maxkling]

Here’s what I do including just yesterday, used my chiller and got it under 90. Drained it to the fermenter, put it in my chest freezer with probe attached and set to 66. 3 hours later it was at 68 so I pitched.

Only problem I have with this is a little suck back through the airlock, but it’s filled with StarSan.

This works fine until I can redesign my chilling set up.

 

[mtnagel]

I brewed last week in 90 degree weather. Before brew day I always make 2 milk jug ice blocks in my freezer. I also make 2 batches of ice cubes in my refrigerator ice maker. Then I use an old cooler for my ice bath with a $48 utility pump from Amazon to circulate ice water through my single immersion chiller.

When I start my 60 min boil, I put about 4 gal of water into the cooler with the 2 ice blocks to start chilling the water. At 30 min and at 45 min into the boil I throw in a batch of ice cubes. At flame out I run tap water from my garden hose through the immersion chill for about 5 min to quickly cool down to about 115 degrees and to keep the warmest water out of the cooler. At 5 min I switch to the ice bath and trim on the utility pump. Last week I reached 62 degrees at 23 minutes total chilling time and pitched the yeast. I still had about half the ice in the cooler to dump out.

I've definitely thought about getting a pump to recirculate ice water through my immersion chiller, but haven't pulled the trigger. It looks like the one you linked to will connect to the garden hose fitting on my immersion chiller, so it should be pretty simple to switch from the hose to the pump and move the output tube to the bucket with the ice. I think you've convinced me to add this to my process.

 

[odie]

I'll pitch anytime in the 80s if it's already in the ferm chamber and headed south. It's going down to 68' shortly anyway. The yeast still has to wake up for a bit before it starts doing anything.