I brew in the cold garage and often leave my beers overnight in the cold before pitching the yeast. I like how the hops and trub settle out before I put it in the fermenter. Now I’m using a conical and I’m letting things settle and dumping trub before pitching. I’m curious if others do this and if its a good idea at all. I used to pitch immediately after chilling under the assumption that having the yeast in the fermenter would out compete any bad bugs. Am I making a mistake letting it sit?
From my understanding, waiting to pitch at the proper temp is more beneficial then pitching early too warm.
if your sanitation is reasonably sound and everything is clean you are fine. You are still introducing a great big population of yeast and anything that might be in there would not have grown to a large enough population to stand a chance assuming there are not great colonies of bacteria in there to start with
Steve inTX.
I’m probably pitching too cold. If TX means Texas, your may not understand. Today it was about 30 in my garage. I will let the beer get to that overnight, pitch and warm tomorrow. Too hot is not my problem normally.
Mort, that’s what I figured but as spring eventually comes, I may be pushing it.
May not understand? I had to move my plants into the garage last night due to late freeze. For comparison, it was mid 80’s on Saturday with an overnight low of mid 60’s. Texas is bizarre.
As long as you are pitching warm enough for the yeast to get going, and keeping everything sanitary, you’re golden.
And the weather can be crazy too 
I’ve gone so far as leaving beers in the kettle on a cold night, wrapping the BK with a trash bag, without any problems. Ideally you want to pitch within 12 hours, but I have gone as long as 18.
[quote=“majorvices, post:7, topic:16410, username:majorvices”]
I’ve gone so far as leaving beers in the kettle on a cold night, wrapping the BK with a trash bag, without any problems. Ideally you want to pitch within 12 hours, but I have gone as long as 18.
[/quote]
18 would scare the bejeepers out of me, but I am learning to trust the process more these days. Thankfully even with my lagers I can get to mid 50’s with my recirc immersion 50 foot of half inch copper in about 30-40 minutes then get below 50 in a couple hours in the fridge. That’s for a 10-12 gallon batch - my standard size.
[quote=“ynotbrusum, post:8, topic:16410, username:ynotbrusum”]
Don’t get me wrong, I’d prefer to see signs of fermentation in 18 hours as opposed to waiting to pitch that long. But even in the MBAA handbook it says that waiting 8-12 hours is commercial acceptable and some breweries apparently do this to drop break material before pitching.
As long as you have excellent sanitation practices, you can go longer than 18 hours. Not that it’s beneficial, but you can.
Well, it was 14 hrs so we shall see. I can usually pitch right away but like I said, I’ve been trying to wait and drop trub. My beer gets consumed rather quickly so I’m not worried about long term storage but I do understand why it’s best to pitch fast and I don’t do this when the temps are warmer but when the garage is close to freezing, I don’t expect much contamination.
Thanks all.
A wort stability test is a good idea to do once in a while anyway. If there’s visible growth in less than ~5 days of warm storage, that’s a contamination issue. A day of cold storage should never be an issue.
I hate to admit this but one time I made 10BBL of wort. Transfer it into fermenter and found out that I did not have yeast ready (do not recall why) I ended up waiting about 5 days before I could harvest yeast from another fermenter.
So if you brew clean you can store your wort a couple of days before pitching. Not ideal but can be done.
As if on cue: I brewed a tripel on Wednesday, came in next day to pitch yeast (about 14 hours later) and found I had a plug in conical that would not move even under 15 lbs of pressure and 900+ gallons on top. Had to blow out the plug threw the port with Co2 and then had to wait till the next day to harvest yeast since all the yeast needed time to drop bak into the cone. So ended up being over 48 hours. Didn’t like it but not too worried.