It was bound to happen. Brewing the house APA today… people visiting, another friend who is nooober than I am brewing and needing help…two burners… too much going on at the same time. Partial mash kit, put the wort in the fermenter with the appropriate amount of cold water, ran the O2 for a few minutes and pitched the yeast…at that very moment realizing I did not know the temperature of the liquid… A quick measurement told me 84º…
So I followed Charlie’s advice, had a home brew and am not worrying…yet. I will see if it gets going, if it does good.
Now for the question: If it doesn’t get going, and I killed the yeast, is there any rule that say I can’t pitch another pack of yeast?
84 degrees won’t kill the yeast. In fact they love that temperature. Make some terrible tasting beer at that temp though. Look for some extra head ache inducing fusels, more than the usual amount of esters and minimal if any head retention. Oh, and learn to make a yeast starter.
Maybe. Depends how fast you can chill. While there is certainly a visible lag, yeast start working almost immediately (given they are not dormant). And it takes me over night to get my wort down from 80 degrees to the proper pitching temps in a chest freezer set to around 38-45 degrees. Set out at room temp it probably won’t reach 70 degrees before the yeast start working to actually raise the temp.
Best to always chill your wort to at least below 70 degrees before aerating and pitching. Not much good can come out of pitching warm.
Cool… as soon as I figgered out what happened I dropped a sanitized wort chiller in there and got it below 70º…I’m going to say it was above that for maybe 10 minutes, no more.
Yes, I will atone and drink it all… in fact I will tell everyone else something horrible happened to it and they can’t have any.
Thanks for all the comments. Even the one about my avatar. For the record, that is a self portrait titled “Agent Zork” and it was taken after a particularly heavy duty dry-wall mud sanding session… ;D
The look of surprise in your avatar just seemed fitting to your “error,” it almost says “Oh $hit…what have I done?”
From now on when you “goof,” you can say “Agent Zork did it.”
Yes thin coats are good. The sanding experience was earlier in my drywall career. I have tried the wet sanding, but found that one has to be careful not to go through the paper. I now use a sander with a suction hose on it, connected to a shop vac, but first running through a bucket of water which traps the dust. VERY effective.
You’re totally fine, you probably won’t notice a thing since you dropped the temp so quickly. If you do notice anything it is probably your imagination.
In the future though, if you pitch warm enough to kill the yeast (generally 105F+ makes them really unhappy) then you can definitely pitch more yeast once you get it down to an appropriate temperature. Lab yeast strain growth temp is 86F, “heat shock” temp is ~108F for 45 seconds.
