Pitching at Fridge Temperature?

[tmendick]

Has anyone ever tried pitching an ale yeast at fridge temp? I know that you want the temp of the yeast to be close to the temp of the wort to avoid shocking the yeast.

My thought would be to bring the wort down to about 65 with my IC, rack into a carboy, put it in the fridge overnight to let all of the hot/cold break drop, rack into a new carboy, and pitch yeast.
The reason I want to do this is because my trub is taking up too much space in my carboy.

I currently decant my starters let it warm, and pitch and ferment at the lower end of the recommended range.

 

[winvarin]

If I get what you're saying properly, you want to pitch at fridge temp and then let it warm back up for fermentation?

If so, I think you're probably OK as long as both your wort and your starter are at/near the same temp. The rule of thumb I've always heard is that you want no more than a 10F differential between wort and starter temps in order to reduce temp shock like you say.

So if both starter and wort sit in the fridge overnight, then you rack, pitch and start warming everything up to ferment temps, you should be good.

The only downside I can think of is that you might have some lag in the start of fermentation while you're warming back up. The only place I could see that being problematic is if something else (wild yeast, bacteria, etc.) establishes itself before your yeast wakes up and goes to work.

Have you looked into whirlpooling? I usually whirlpool after chilling and let it spin down for about 20 min while I start cleaning. If you don't have a pump to whirlpool with, you could use the same method I used to before adding pumps and some whirlpool fittings to my kettle.

I used to chill, then stir with a sanitized SS spoon for about 2 min. Then I'd put the lid on my kettle and give it about 15-20 min to spin down. That left the bulk of my trub, hops, cold break in a nice little cone in the center of the kettle. With a little practice, I learned to rack from the edge of the pot and leave a lot of the break material behind.

 

[WoodlandBrew]

That's a novel solution to a problem. Very clever. I'm curious as to how it comes out. During the initial phase yeast are adapting to their environment and adapting their environment to suit their needs. I would be a little concerned that the environment is a moving target as the temperature ramps up during this critical phase, but I really don't know what the effect would be. It could be similar to shock excretion, just over a longer period of time.

 

[LLBeanJ]

I think a better idea would be to ignore the trub and pitch at the proper ferm temp. The trub will compact on its own.

 

[philosofool]

This sounds like a recipe for a weird fermentation to me. I've never done it, but I think you could definite produce some odd results when, say 20% of the yeast consumes all the oxygen, going through several more generations than usual while a bunch of the yeast is just waking up. I don't know that this would happen, but I would worry about.

On the other hand, if it seems like a great benefit, it would be a worthy experiement.