Improper to pitch at room temp and immediately lower to lager temp?

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HopTonger

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I'm wondering if I'm possibly using a poor technique with the lager beers I've been brewing. I have been chilling my wort to low 70s, aerating, and pitching a 1qt starter. Immediately after pitching at essentially room temp, fermenter goes in fridge with controller set to 50deg - theory being the wort will be at proper primary fermentation temp by the time active fermentation takes off. This seemed to work fine for a lovely pilsner I brewed earlier in the year - OG 1.053 FG 1.010 - but the Bocktoberfest I just kegged - 1.065 OG 1.010 FG has a taste of esther and maybe a little sulphur. All sorts of posts out there on this topic, but not so much on pitching room temp and immediately dropping to lager temp? Bad?


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Some sources say to pitch at room temp and wait for fermentation to start (~24hrs). Then drop slowly to 50-ish. Others say to cool the wort to 50 and then pitch. I've done both and the fermentations were fine. I couldn't detect any difference but that doesn't mean there isn't one. That said, some of the members here that I highly respect say to pitch at 50 so that's what I do now.

Once the SG is about 80% of the way to my projected FG (about 2 weeks), I raise the temp to about 65 for a 3 day diacetyl rest. Then I lower about 3-4 degrees per day down to lagering temp (36-38) for a couple of months before bottling. Not totally sure how it goes for kegging.
 
Thanks for the quick response. I think I will start pitching at 50deg. I also do the diacytel rest.
The other thing I did with the Bocktoberfest was cold crash to lager temp after the diacytel rest - that was probably also a mistake.


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if you've only got a one quart starter, i would suggest that you would be better off pitching in the 60s somewhere and then cooling down after you see signs of fermentation (likely around 24 hours). i think you'll get less sulphur that way.
 
One more thing to add is the yeast tend to go to sleep if chilled rapidly enough. So you putting them in at 70F and then chilling 20 degrees in a short amount of time might have put a lot of them to sleep. This could have contributed to the flavors you're describing.
 
On some of the old brewing network Jamil series shows, John Plise and Jamil have a bit of a back and forth about this. Jon was pitching at room temp and lowering and winning final round NHC medals. Jamil was fully behind cooling the wort to fermentation temp and then pitching (also winning final round medals). So both can be done to great success.

That said I would suspect that it is better for the yeast to start cold and warm up rather than crashing down right as they get going. Do you have an idea how many cells you are growing? As progmac points out, a 1 qt starter is probably on the low side for an average lager batch.
 
Beer nerd I am...math nerd, not so much - have no idea how to even calculate the cells. I used WLP830 in a 64oz growler with 34oz water + 3oz extra light DME - I made the starter 2-3 days prior and left it at room temp.
I had a couple glasses of the beer last night after letting it rest a few more days in the keg - a bit different and for the better - significant drop in off flavors - I think it's possible the first few pints were just full of some sediment - was a touch cloudy then and now is clear as a bell. If anything, it over-attenuated. I was expecting 1.013-1.015 and it's 1.010. It's still very malt-forward and has an alcoholic warmth to it.


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Beer nerd I am...math nerd, not so much - have no idea how to even calculate the cells. I used WLP830 in a 64oz growler with 34oz water + 3oz extra light DME - I made the starter 2-3 days prior and left it at room temp.
I had a couple glasses of the beer last night after letting it rest a few more days in the keg - a bit different and for the better - significant drop in off flavors - I think it's possible the first few pints were just full of some sediment - was a touch cloudy then and now is clear as a bell. If anything, it over-attenuated. I was expecting 1.013-1.015 and it's 1.010. It's still very malt-forward and has an alcoholic warmth to it.


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Cool, well fortunately for you, someone else has already set up a calculator for the number of cells you are growing, given the starter size, the type of starter (on a stirplate, shaking, just leaving it), and how fresh your yeast pack was. The calculator is designed to determine how big your starter needs to be to pitch the right amount into your wort so you have to reverse engineer it a bit to find out how many cells you grew with a certain starter, but still no math. Here is the calculator

(http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html)

That starter does sound a bit small and you probably won't get much cell growth out of it. If you can remember to swirl it a bit whenever you walk by that will help. And if you wanted to try to increase the size a bit and sneak a bit more into your growler, 10 g of DME for 100 mL is a standard starter strength. You could probably do 1.2+ L, depending on the yeast, in a normal 64 oz growler.

Glad your beer is improving as you have it.
 
ImageUploadedByHome Brew1412379685.237829.jpgas always - thanks for all the advice and cheers


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Looks delicious. Use a yeast calculator, I typically pitch 1 gallon for a big lager. I always use an oxygen stone in lagers, get great relatively fast fermentations with O2 injection.

I have a Maibock in the keg, may have to go pour myself one now.
 
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