I'm planning on doing my first warm fermented lager next weekend. I came across a post on reddit where the poster said they had better results pitching 34/70 around 40F and letting it warm naturally at room temperature. Anyone have experience doing this?
It turns out iirc, and let me know if I am not recalling correctly, that in a general brew advice sense, pitching cold yeast from fridge into warm wort is one of the best ways to pitch dry yeast. Not sure if this is what you are doing or talking about, but wanted to share this little tip. I have confirmed this, once again iirc, with some really masterful brewers. Idk why it works but man it works great. If you are not talking about this, then the reasons behind that reddit users post, as innocent as it seems, delves deeply into the fierce (literally) debate that spawned this thread. I can, as can others here more knowledgeable than me, splay out the rationale behind why brew theory would support his findings.
But that opens this thread up to begin that debate, or continue it better said, and the passion on both sides behind that debate, it takes off like wildfire. This thread needs to remain free of that debate as it will take over and consume the thread for starters. However, seen as a technique if one can get their wort that cold I dont see anything bad that could come out of doing that technique and in general pitching somewhat lower and letting rise is seen as a good practice as once fermentation starts to high it wont lower as the process will keep the heat up. Some, John Palmer for example, have scientific rationale and empirical evidence that brewing this way is the proper and best way. Others, like me, have our own empirical evidence and taste tests, or dont care enough about any slight variation to buy fermentation fridges or other specialized equipment. I am not against that method or discussing it, maybe using a fridge to cool wort, then pitching and letting rise and fermenting warm, but want to make sure that no debate ensues. What would be great is to test this, the batches need to be identical in every way except one is chilled in fridge then yeast pitched and allowed to rise and ferment warm. And one cooled to 64 or whatever and yeast pitched. Then tasted in a blind triangle, you taste two of one and one of the other and then try to pick the odd one out.
