Work Cooling Temperature Before Transfer

[DSmith]

My tap water in the Summer is about 70F, what maximum temperature should the wort be cooled to before transferring to a carboy? Additional cooling to pitching temperature using chest freezer/controller.

 

[KISS Brew]

Ideally the wort should be at or slightly below your planned fermentation temperature. If you can't quite make that, get it as close as you can. If you really want to push the limits, you'll probably make beer and not kill the yeast if you pitch as high as 75-80F for an ale yeast.

An ice bath can help, either to cool your wort or to prechill the water coming through your wort chiller.

My tap water is 80F and I manage to cool to a proper pitching temperature, so you have no excuse

 

[ArcLight]

I think the question you should be asking is: At what temperature should I pitch my yeast. The answer is probably around 68-70, depending on the yeast.

You will probably find taht its easy to chill your wort down to the water temperature + 10 (or 15) degrees.
Its much harder to chill below that.

So if you can chill down to 80, transfer that to your carboy, and let it sit in an icebath for a while. Just dont soak your thermometer strip (fermometer).

If you rock the carboy every so often, it wont take long to get it to 70.

If you have:>> Additional cooling to pitching temperature using chest freezer/controller.
then put it in at around 80ish.


Yeast will not die at 80, they will be very active, but will probably give you flavors (such as Fusal Alcohol and Esters you may not want). Long term, you don't want your yeast at 80.

 

[wilserbrewer]

My tap water in the Summer is about 70F, what maximum temperature should the wort be cooled to before transferring to a carboy? Additional cooling to pitching temperature using chest freezer/controller.

If your concern is damaging the carboy...I would guess 120-130 degrees would be cool enough to transfer to a carboy and finish cooling in the chest freezer.

 

[DSmith]

I'm not asking about pitching temperature, always finish cooling to fermentation temperature (or cooler if cold-pitching) in a fermentation chamber before pitching yeast.

Is 80F or less generally ok for wort cooling before transferring?

 

[KISS Brew]

I'm not asking about pitching temperature, always finish cooling to fermentation temperature (or cooler if cold-pitching) in a fermentation chamber before pitching yeast.

Is 80F or less generally ok for wort cooling before transferring?

Sorry, I misunderstood. Yes, 80F should be fine.

 

[SparklyFarmBrewing]

I've been having the same issues this summer, and have been moving my carboys to the freezer around 80 degrees or a little more. My trouble has been that the freezer will fire up to cool the fermenter and by the time the wort temp hits 65 the freezer walls are ice cold, and it ends up overshooting and cooling down near 60, then I end up opening the top and waiting for it to go back the other way! I'm getting better at managing it but it has been a bit of a battle these last few weeks. Of course if the freezer already has a resident its even trickier