When should i warm my yeast?

[beerdyman]

Hey guys I'm getting ready to start a new homebrew and I'm making a starter for the first time and am not sure how much time I need to give the yeast to acclimate to room temp. also how long is too long to leave your yeast out? I leave my house for work at 6 am and get home around 4-430. If I took it out at 6 and made my starter around 5 would that be ok?

Thanks for the help!

 

[jskinner10]

That would be fine. The only big danger with temperatures and yeast, at least from my understanding, is when you pitch yeast that has been at room temperature into wort chilled to lager fermentation temperatures. That big drop in temperatures can supposedly thermally shock yeast. For your yeast starter, just take the yeast out of the fridge before you go to work. It'll be fine.

 

[duboman]

Congratulations on taking the step to better beer with the use of a starter!

Did you properly calculate the needed pitch rate for your beer? Visit http://www.yeastcalc.com, plug in the date of the pack and the OG of the beer and style and it will tell you the size of the starter you need and any additional step ups that might be required to get the proper pitch rate.

As for the package itself,your fine with what you did but in the future, since you are making a starter it is not even really necessary, I just take mine from the fridge and dump it into the starter wort when it's ready. There is no issue putting cold yeast into warmer wort/beer. The issue is the other way around, warm yeast do not like going into cold wort as it shocks them into sleep. As the cold yeast become warmer they become active, not the other way around.

Even with the wort brewed I prefer to pitch slightly colder than the desired fermentation temperature and allow the wort to self rise to that temperature after the yeast has been pitched. This creates a slow, controlled growth phase which is really the healthiest way to go about pitching yeast.

 

[Gameface]

I used to leave my starter out for a few hours to let it warm up. That caused problems when I was pitching ~70F yeast into ~60F wort where it seemed to take the yeast a long time to wake back up. Now I Pull the yeast out of the fridge when I begin chilling my wort and pitch yeast that are colder then the wort they're going into. That has been working well for me.