Beer Forum

Alright so I recently posed some decanting questions. During the course of the question Denny responded saying to pitch the yeast cold directly into your cooled wort. He was saying tha the moment the yeast warms up it starts to use its energy reserves, it is better to let the yeast spend those in the wort rather then while warming up. This baffles me. Reading the yeast book it says with in 5 degrees of wort temp. The yeast book makes me feel if something is a degree off my beer is fucked. Does anyone practice this?

jagoffyinzer wrote:...Reading the yeast book it says with in 5 degrees of wort temp....

This generally refers to cold wort and warm yeast. You don't want the yeast to go into survival mode and go temporarily dormant. You can attemperate the yeast by adding small amounts of wort (say 25% of the yeast volume) per hour over the course of a 3-4 hours.

Cold yeast into warm wort is OK. The yeast like to be warmed up.

I generally let my cold yeast warm up a bit as I'm brewing, based on the sorts of directions that are on refrigerated liquid yeast packs that say to warm it up a bit before tossing it in.

I personally would go with the book, I try to pitch yeast at the temp of the wort to reduce the amount of stress on the yeast.

For my starters that have been chilled and the liquid removed. I start by remaking a small starter. You don't need a lot, just enough to activiate the yeast again. That way I am pitching active yeast into wort.

However, one thing I will say is that this hobby is somewhat forgiving. Have fun with it. A degree off is not going to screw your beer. Have fun with it and enjoy yourself. Most of the time, I am completely $hit faced when I brew and manage somehow to make beer!

Amento that brother...Remember we have been brewing beer for 4000 years. Relax if you are going to worry about a degree or two it seems the fun is being taken out of it .

I've pitched into 80, 60 and 68 Degree wort no problems.
I've had temp swings in a ferment from 68 to 52 degrees with no problems
But not fer nuthin' every yeast is different, so mileage will vary.