I’m with you there.
I was just going to reply - snarky :-). But alas your edit, I was not trying to be short, I had to go. I did agree with most of what you said that is why I singled out the one item. I had already studied the ferm process on it and thought of many of the same things as being possible. However it was already at 68 degrees in only 24 hours, so I’m less reluctant to go with it having possibly missed the typical ester formation period. The standard advice is to hold temperature for 2-3 days, especially while it climbs above ambient. Where are the fusels since it pushed 72 by 36 hours? What he did is by no means what I would consider a best practice, but I have had no choice but to do it before. Consistency will surely be difficult. Different yeast will behave differently.
I have not read it for sometime. IIRC he proposes the old pitch 2 degrees below fermentation temperature to get the best beer possible. Which he clearly does not do. The result was in direct contrast with your statement
“I will continue to suggest to new brewers who want to improve their product that the chill the wort well before pitching and pitch at or below desired ferm temp”
I am not even sure what chill your wort well means 
( I 'm sure this was a typo of sorts)
Sure you can sit back and conjure up a situation where it won’t work, but his point is it can work, against conventional wisdom. I have no dog in this fight, I pitch a couple degrees cool and control my fermentation temps in a controlled chamber. Consistency is what comes to mind first, before quality. Great beers can be made lots of ways.
Many ways to make great beer, for sure. Interesting result for this yeast this time. I wonder what the relative pitch rate was…
I used to pitch at 70F to 72F and allow the batch to cool to 66F on a regular basis before I went on a 100% lager, 100% of the time kick. Beers made using that strategy were easily as clean as the beers that I have tasted using the generally-accepted modern approach to home brew fermentation.
As I mentioned in the RPM threat, the reason why most home brewers see a reduction in overall fermentation trash when starting ales in the high fifties/low sixties is that low-temperature ale fermentation favors domesticated microflora. Holding the fermentation low during the lag and early exponential phases gives the pitched culture a huge advantage over its competitors, especially household bacteria. The bacteria cell count in a fermentation increases eightfold every time the yeast cell count doubles because bacteria cells divide every thirty minutes whereas yeast cells divide every ninety minutes. The yeast cells own the fermentation by the time that the batch warms up enough for wild microflora to become active.
I can see your point but I think when it comes to begining homebrewers the problems I most often encounter are fusels. Sure those could be the fault of other microflora but given that most instructions have them pitching at 75 and ‘keeping the carboy in a closet’ that is caused by excessive fermentation temperature pure and simple.
On pitching warm and chilling the rest of the way quickly. The pitch temp experiment referenced above does seem to indicate that it’s not as much of an issue as is generally thought.
My concern would be that if you take these two experiments together and you fail to apply a sense of nuance you get a) pitching warm is okay and b) fermenting uncontrolled is okay and we are back on terrible 1990’s kit instructions again. Then I start getting pounding fusel headaches everytime I taste someones homebrew. I appreciate the value of isolating a variable and testing it but drawing conclusions from those results without taking into account the interplay between all the other variables is naive.
My take away from this experiment is that it’s okay to let the temp rise from a nice low pitch temp. I already knew this and I believe it is, or is quickly becoming, ‘common sense’.
My take away from the pitch temp experiment is that if you are concerned about the biological stability of your wort you can choose to pitch the yeast while the wort is still a bit too warm for a happy fermentation so long as you quickly get the temperatures down to within a desirable temp.
All of these things can be easily and more understandable summarized to the beginner who’s mind you do not wish to cloud as: Pitch cool and control temps for best results.
I’m in contact with Marshall fairly frequently as a fellow experimenter. He’s aware of the shortcomings of some of his experiments, but that doesn’t reduce the validity of what he does. FWIW, this experiment will be repeated with WY1214, which is one of the most temp sensitive yeasts I’ve ever run across.
that’s a great idea. I’m a fan of his experiments, and its good he’s open to critiquing.
I don’t mean to knock Marshall. In fact having read a couple of the write ups I think me makes a good effort to use fairly narrow, nuanced language in his conclusions. I am more concerned with others drawing conclusions that are not warranted.
Marshall is a great guy and all he wants to do is come up with info he can share with other homebrewers. He’s more than open to ideas about how to do that.
Yep.
I’m pretty curious to see how that comes out with 1214. Yeah, that has to be one of the most temp sensitive strains out there.
We have finally found something on which we both agree. The Chimay strain is like a cantankerous old mule that will kick you if it gets the opportunity to do so. It has to be one step away from being a wild strain.
Well…That sounds like a challenge…WY1214 is in the cart…any hints?
Don’t ferment it hot. I’d keep it in the low 60s.
I was a bit worried as it seemed this thread started to shift toward elitism… but self corrected. Marshall is absolutely aware and open to the limitations of his experiments. The careful wording is there - but perhaps he could be more explicit with his findings… Certainly no one should translate single data point findings with serious and repeatable science. Marshall doesn’t claim this level of authority. Still ‘mythbusting’ many of the old doctrines of homebrewing are informative and valuable.
I welcome this kind of challenging and open experimentation. Even when the findings are (most often) not definitive, one can take away something. At the least, the debate here has been productive.
Good to know. I’m thinking about doing an Imperial Pilsner brewed with an ale yeast at room temperature (mid 60s).