Tasting this beer will be a great lesson for you. Pitching warm and then cooling to fermentation temperatures is going to at best throw a bunch of off flavors, and at worst hurt your attenuation. It's crucial to cool the wort to ferm temp before pitching the yeast. My beer improved tremendously after doing this, and of course keeping the temperature where I want it during the entire fermentation process.
TLDR pitching hot and cooling to ferm temp is the complete opposite of what you want to do. if anything pitch cool (within a few degrees) and warming up can yield great results.
Going to have to disagree with the "It's crucial to cool the wort to ferm temp before pitching the yeast" statement above. I can't remember the last time I did that, if I ever did.
My standard procedure is to pitch yeast into wort that's close to the same temp as the starter. Typically that's around 70 degrees, give or take a degree or two. I'll usually let it sit there, depending, for a few hours, then take it down to ferm temps...low/mid 60s for an ale, 50 degrees for a lager.
I agree, if this is what you were saying, that pitching too warm and leaving it there for an extended period will likely produce unintended flavors (exception: Kviek yeast, and some farmhouse/saison applications).
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In fact, I do my lagers intentionally so as to pitch warm. I do a starter, try to time it so I'll pitch at about 18 hours after putting on the stir plate. No double-packs of yeast, no building up a starter to high cell counts--I just pitch it into warmish (same temp as yeast starter, ~70 degrees) oxygenated wort. Then leave it at that temp for 6-8 hours and then begin to ramp it down to 50 degrees.
If I left it there at 70 for an extended period...well, it would be different than what we'd expect, and again, maybe that's what you're warning against, and if so, very much agreed.
Those beers turn out great. Not just my ugly baby opinion, but others rave about them.
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I think some of that advice comes from back in the day, much like the directions in kits saying "use a secondary" which almost nobody does any more.
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Have to pass this along as an interesting unintended experiment. Was brewing a California Common. Turns out I misread the expiry on the Wyeast 2112 pack I had, it was 10 months old. Did a starter, it didn't look very appealing. so I pitched directly an 8-month-old pack of White Labs 810.
[Yeah, I know. Misread the "Nov 18" date on the Wyeast pack as expiring Nov 18th, 2019. It was packaged in November 2018.
]
After 24 hours, it was apparent that the old pack of White Labs was too old. No activity at all, not even a single bubble in the blowoff jar.
So I pitched a sachet of 34/70 dry yeast. Dropped the temp to 64 (which is where I'd ferment the Cal Common yeasts), as an experiment. Too warm, for sure, but some of the flavor in California Commons comes from, I believe, fermenting a lager yeast warm.
That yeast was virtually done in 48 hours. Stunningly fast fermentation.
That beer is only 9 days old today; I kegged it at 6 days after crashing, and it's finishing carbonation right now. It's NOT a nice clean lager, at least not yet, but then, I didn't expect that. Might end up being a new variation of California Common.
I'm anxious to see what I get at 3-4 weeks.
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I hate beers like this. What if it turns out to be the greatest beer ever produced--and I can't reproduce it!
It's labeled in my keezer as "Frankenlager."
A buddy here said, hey, you should be able to reproduce it. Easy steps: Oxygenate wort. Pitch a pack of dead yeast. Wait 24 hours, pitch a pack of 34/70.
In other words, screw up exactly the same way.
