Well there’s theory and then there’s reality. While the theory you’re working on is great, the reality is that chilling and decanting works every bit as well. The yeast will wake up fine when they go into the warm wort. And the significance of the “lag phase” (which doesn’t really exist) is much less than it’s made out to be. In practice, your beer will turn out the same whether there’s a 4 hour lag or a 24 hour lag. One final data point…yesterday, I took a 3 qt. starter out of 1056 out of the fridge, decanted the spent wort, and immediately, without warming it up, pitched it into 61F wort. I had fermentation starting in 3 hours and this AM I’m getting blowoff at 63F.
All of that is a rather long winded way of saying that the only thing that counts is your own experience…try it more than one way and decide for yourself.
Even though I don’t have a job, my brew days often get shifted around at the last second. So I let my starters ferment pout and keep them in the fridge. Yesterday, a chance to brew arose. Fortunately, I’d had a starter of 1056 in the fridge for a week or 2. I was able to just pull it out, decant, and pitch it.
I’ve decanted and not decanted over the years and it’s one of those things where you’ll make good beer either way IMO. So having said that, I choose to not pitch spent DME with no hops or resemblance to my grist.
Not brewed a 10th as much as Denny, but I’m in the same camp. I’ve poured my starter wort off, pitched it without matching temp of wort, had it take off in 3-4 hours or 12-18hrs…can’t say I perceive any difference in the finished product. Healthy yeast want to get in and do their job, and seemingly are indifferent to the variables in theory that we have all gotten hung up on at some point.
Yes they are fairly tough. Its funny how we scrub and soak in acid and flame to be sure we kill them when we don’t want them, then when we want them we worry that they will all die unless we handle them just so. But, it’s still a good idea to do the best we can.