How do you get your wort down in the 60’s to pitch? Mine is almost always between 73-75 - just because that’s my ambient temp I guess. I use a mini fridge with a temp controller after I’ve pitched, but that doesn’t help the pitching temp.
Should I just stick it in the mini fridge until it gets to the 60’s, then pitch??? This thought just came to me as I was typing. Geesh.
Thanks
Yeah, if the water in your chiller isn’t cold enough then you can certainly just refrigerate for 2-3 hours or overnight or as long as it takes to get it down, and then pitch after. Occasionally I leave my wort overnight before I pitch. I haven’t really noticed any problems doing this, although I suppose it is possible for infection to set in. But if your sanitation practices are good and you pitch enough yeast then it really should not be a problem at all.
Leaving it overnight before you pitch won’t hurt it as long as you were good with sanitation getting it into the fermenter.
Or you could do like I did: move to a place where the tap water always stays below 70, and falls down to the mid 30s during the wintertime. Never a problem getting the wort down to pitching temperature.
Cool - thanks much guys - appreciate it!
:cheers:
Just a +1 to this. I do this all the time, without any infections. As a bonus, if you transfer to a new, clean/sanitized fermenter after the remainder of chilling, you can aerate more and leave a good bit of trub behind, which is great for repitching yeast.
I use a pump in a ice water bath and run the water through my Chiller till I’m at pitching temp.
Moving to Finland would be cool. 
+1.
During the summer months, (my basement rarely rises above 60°F) I’ll often leave my covered keggle overnite and run the wort through the prepared counterflow chiller in the morning. I’ve never lost a batch doing it that way.
This is what I do as well. Much less wasted water too.
Get two chillers. One coil sits in an cooler of ice then it flows into the chiller in the wort. Two stage. You could recirculate water through it if you want to save water
Since I brew 20+ gallon batches, I like to chill as fast as I can. I set up two CFCs in series and it works great (as long as your water temp is no higher than low to mid 60s.
I have a huge round tub (think the one that you’d see at a picnic) and I add about 20lbs of ice and put my kettle in it and let my chiller do the rest. I usually get to the low 60’s within 30 minutes.
I have also placed my fermenter in the chest freezer for a few hours like Dave mentioned without a hitch.
Summer brews can be tough when the ground water is 80 degrees.
Yes, metal tub and lots of ice. Empty your ice maker if you’ve got one. I’ll also buy bags of ice in summer when they’re readily available at gas stations and corner stores.
I had the same problem with my first batch. Since then I invested in a freezer with temp control. Also in my latest batch I only do a 2.5gal boil, and stuck two 1gal jugs of bottled water in the freezer while I brewed. This helped a lot, and then stuck the wort in the fermentation freezer while I rehydrated the yeast. 1hr later temps were right on for pitching.
My IC and well water can get mine in the low 80s fairly quickly even in the summer. Then I push to fermentation buckets and put them in my fermentation fridge.
I usually brew early in the morning; so I will wait and pitch my yeast that evening or night. Never had any issues doing it this way.
My water during the summer is warm, like almost 80 degrees, even when set to cold. It doesn’t help cooling the wort. For my first brew I attempted to chill it with my IC but the water was too warm so I switched to an ice bath. My second brew I actually bought bags of ice and did the ice bath. It cooled down a lot better. I will see how much colder the water is during the winter. I like the idea of gallon jugs of water in the freezer while boiling to get them nice and cold. Adding those to cooled wort probably makes it a lot cooler overall!
Yeah the gallon jugs took mine from 100 down below 80. Throwing it in my fermentation freezer got i the rest of the way in about an hour.
I run 22 gal batches and pumping through two CFC’s gets me to the upper 60’s most of the time. Hottest my ground water temp has gotten since the city did some upgrades has been 70F and that is only during peak summer months.
[quote=“db297”]How do you get your wort down in the 60’s to pitch? Mine is almost always between 73-75 - just because that’s my ambient temp I guess. I use a mini fridge with a temp controller after I’ve pitched, but that doesn’t help the pitching temp.
Should I just stick it in the mini fridge until it gets to the 60’s, then pitch??? This thought just came to me as I was typing. Geesh.
Thanks[/quote]
Why is it an issue if you’re pitching at 73-75? If there’s a lag phase for your yeast, it seems like you should be able to drop the wort temperature to 66-68 roughly by the time the growth phase begins. I’m ready to stand to be corrected, but I wouldn’t anticipate any detectable off-flavor production during the lag phase, especially not with “only” 73-75F.
[quote=“Silentknyght”]
Why is it an issue if you’re pitching at 73-75? If there’s a lag phase for your yeast, it seems like you should be able to drop the wort temperature to 66-68 roughly by the time the growth phase begins. I’m ready to stand to be corrected, but I wouldn’t anticipate any detectable off-flavor production during the lag phase, especially not with “only” 73-75F.[/quote]
I was thinking about that myself yesterday. I was pitching around 75 degrees and immediately putting it in my mini fridge. Usually within 3 hours the temp’s down to 67 or whatever… so maybe it was no big deal… cool.
Thanks,
:cheers:
