Pitching a cold yeast starter directly from the fridge

I’ve read a couple of references where brewers pitch their yeast starters cold from the fridge. Other references have also indicated that some commercial breweries are doing the same thing (pitching directly from a cold yeast brink that is). Has anyone done this and what were your results, good and bad?

When I can, I try to re-pitch directly on the day of racking from the harvested fermentor and pitching to the newly brewed batch.  The fermentor the yeast comes from will be in the mid-40’s and the new batch will be down to the low 50’s initially and headed toward the mid 40’s overnight.

I always pitch (whether starter, or, most often, harvested yeast) cold yeast into relatively warmer wort.  The concern you’ll read about with regard to temperature difference is the idea that pitching warm yeast into colder wort will knock the yeast out.  I don’t see any problem with letting the wort warm your yeast up rather than trying to bring it up to wort temperature separately.

I can’t offer a comparison because I’ve always pitched cold, but I’ve never had a problem with yeast performance that couldn’t be directly correlated to something else.

This is what I’ve read ( what little I’ve  been able to find so far ). I wonder if thermal shock is more of a concern in pitching a warm yeast starter into cool wort as opposed to the opposite. Lends one to wonder if thermal shock is based on older information from days when lesser quality yeast was what we had available to us. Would make for a good exbeeriment.

I’ve found yeast thermal shock to be a total non issue.  I’ve pitched warm yeast and cold yeast.  My observation is that the cold yeast did at least as well as the warmed up yeast.

As long as the health good and the number right and the delta not huge, not a big deal.