I’m getting ready to brew a Kolsch this afternoon. I plan on using my chest freezer to ferment at 58*. Should I pitch Wyeast 2565 around 65* and let the chest freezer cool down to fermentation temp? Or pitch closer to 58*?
I would chill to 55°, pitch, then let it free rise to 58°.
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Think the temp runs between 56 to 70 so you should be fine yeast wise
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My wort chiller wouldn’t chill it down cold enough with hose water. So I put it in the chest freezer hopefully to cool it down to below 58* before pitching like you suggested.
That will work! That yeast is pretty powdery so expect a long time for it to drop clear. Usually need to hit it with gelatin.
I’m a little bummed out. I just realize that my aeration stone was clogged up. I thought it wasn’t foaming like I’ve seen them do after 30 mins. I just put it in some boiling distilled water for a few minutes and threw it back in some star san and it’s bubbling like crazy. I never touched it with my fingers either.
Me can not use the waterhose to chill it down fast water temp here on the island around 85 so i use a concreet bucket with ice bags works perfect takes about ten min to bring it to 58 .65 temp .maybe try this
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Yeah they can still clog. They should be boiled after every use and, if you can, blow some O2 through it while it’s boiling. This will promote clearing the pores.
So it finally cooled down enough where I could pitch the yeast. Not exactly at 58° but I had issues with the temp probe not being insulated enough from the air which cause temp to fluctuate when the chest freezer was opened so I wasn’t getting a true reading. While it was cooling I just covered it with saran wrap. After pitching I put the 3 piece airlock on due to height restrictions and had issues with it sucking some star san back in. I think mostly because the air space in the carboy was warmer than the surrounding freezer air. So I swapped it out for some 7/16" OD x 5/16" ID tubing. Came down twice to find that the bung slipped out. Changed it out for one that I’ve used before and finally got that to stay in. After the temp stabilized it seems to be working really great with the temp controller set to 59° with a differential or 2°. Bubbling away like crazy. I need to upgrade my cooling setup and add a side pickup tube to my SB kettle and whirlpool before transferring to the carboy next time.
