Cold Pitching Yeast

[johnno]

Here is an interesting article on brewboard by a member called cj in j.
Funny thing is I have done this a couple of times in the past but not willingly.
I have made starters that fermented out a day or two before brewing.
I went ahead and made the brew and then pitched the finished starter. One was from the fridge at one at room temp.
I always had a smell before pitching and always had some saf around just in case I needed it.
Both times the brew fermented well.

cheers
johnno

 

[Ross]

Here is an interesting article on brewboard by a member called cj in j.
Funny thing is I have done this a couple of times in the past but not willingly.
I have made starters that fermented out a day or two before brewing.
I went ahead and made the brew and then pitched the finished starter. One was from the fridge at one at room temp.
I always had a smell before pitching and always had some saf around just in case I needed it.
Both times the brew fermented well.

cheers
johnno

[post="52939"][/post]​

Fascinating stuff Johnno - I don't reckon a single day has gone past in the lasr few months where I haven't learnt something new....

 

[jgriffin]

That's bloody interesting, and sort of makes sense in a way. I think i will digest some more...

 

[Gough]

Mmmmm.... Thanks for the link Johnno.

Shawn.

 

[Gulf Brewery]

I just started reading the cold pitching article on the link in a bit more detail. They talk about pitching 1 cup of slurry into 19 litres (assumption on the batch size here). I think you will find that pitching that amount of healthy yeast that is the same temperature as the wort will give similar results.

I am not saying cold pitching doesn't work, just that with that amount of yeast I don't think the cold method will gain you anything over the normal way. All of the professional literature talks about not temperature shocking the yeast.

Cheers
Pedro

 

[Batz]

Have to agree
Sort of goes against everthing I have ever believed
That is no to say it's not a good thing , lots of stuff we did believe has been turned upside down.
May give it a shot sometime

Good find Johnno


Batz

 

[BeerIsGood]

What if you use this method to start a lager at lager fermentation temperature? Make your starter, ferment out, refrigerate (say 4C). Prepare lager wort, and cool to lager ferment temperature overnight (say 10C), then pitch cold spent starter in. Or have I just misunderstood the method. It's really too late, I choose to go to bed now.

 

[Ross]

Talking of pitching Lager slurry - just about to rack my Oktoberfest - how much slurry should i use to kick start my next brew? I'm guessing there's no need to build a starter, or should I?

 

[Kai]

All of the professional literature talks about not temperature shocking the yeast.

That was my first thought too. That and I don't understand how pitching cold would accelerate fermentation.

 

[nonicman]

I'll keep looking for where I read this, but so far I cannot find the right quote.

This could be way off track, but as I remember it, when the yeasties are dropped in temp they produce/store food for the hibination (lipids?). As the yeasties warm up they consume this stored food, strengthing their cell walls and breeding happily. It is the dropping of the temp that forces the yeasties store extra food, so when they arrouse they are stronger than yeast that has remained at pitching temp.

Maybe this is why yeast like to be slowly dropped in temp (giving them a change to gather energy for the hibination) and are not too fussed by a rise in temp.

I'll post a link to a source that knows what they are talking about, soon as I find it

 

[sosman]

All of the professional literature talks about not temperature shocking the yeast.

That was my first thought too. That and I don't understand how pitching cold would accelerate fermentation.

[post="52962"][/post]​

Isn't the temperature shocking always refererred to in the context of going colder (if not explicitly).

Anyway - just because we can't understand something, doesn't mean it won't work. Crikey - yeast was discovered long after beer was being brewed.

 

[nonicman]

Response from Dr. Clayton Cone:
1. I have not seen any studies done using this protocol. If I had to take a guess it would be centered around the Trehalose content in the yeast cell. Trehalose seems to be an all around stress related factor. Almost immediately upon the cold storage of the yeast, trehalose begins to build up to help the yeast to adapt to its new environment. Upon pitching this stress factor assists the yeast to adapt to its new environment; warmer temperature and higher osmotic pressure. If the pitching yeast is allowed to warm up for any appreciable time before pitching the carbohydrate reserve, trehalose being one of them will be quickly used up as an energy source. The yeast would then take a longer time adapting to its new environment in the wort thus increasing the lag phase.

Something similar happens when using Active Dry Yeast. The factory builds into each yeast cell an abundance of the stress factor; trehalose. Our recommendations is to rehydrate the yeast in warm water and pitch into the wort (or must) within 30 minutes, because the yeast will begin to metabolize its carbohydrate reserve including trehalose immediately upon reactivation and weaken the yeast if it is not in the presence of a new supply of energy. It will have also used up the stress factor that would have assisted it in adapting to the new osmotic environment. I am sure that there is more to the explanation than I have given.

Danstar yeast questions and answers

This must be the third or fourth link I've made to this page. A great source of yeast info.

Jason

 

[Snow]

Ross,

500ml of slurry will be heaps. Your next brew will take off like a rocket.

- Snow

Talking of pitching Lager slurry - just about to rack my Oktoberfest - how much slurry should i use to kick start my next brew? I'm guessing there's no need to build a starter, or should I?

[post="52956"][/post]​

 

[sluggerdog]

Interesting!

I cannot see why it would not work as the yeast ferments at that temp anyway so why not?

Would love to hear from someone who tries this....

 

[warrenlw63]

From what I've heard a lot of Micros in the US (not sure about here) do exact the same thing. They harvest the yeast from CC, refrigerate and just take out the slurry out and pitch.

IIRC Yeast only shock if they're dropped dramatically from warm. Not vice versa. Take your cold starters from a fridge and leave them at room temp. You'll always find they become active fairly quickly. Provided that they're not overly old

Warren

 

[johnno]

Interesting!

I cannot see why it would not work as the yeast ferments at that temp anyway so why not?

Would love to hear from someone who tries this....

[post="52987"][/post]​

Hi Sluggerdog,
I have tried it twice and it worked fine. The second time I tried it there was a long lag time.
The reason I tried this was mainly out of curiosity to see what would happen. I knew I was risking the brew but I was in that experimental frame of mind. And Like I mentioned earlier I did have dry yeast on hand just in case things didnt work out.

cheers
johnno

 

[nonicman]

This article seems to explain what is happening to yeasties when they are dropped in temp (below 10C but not totally frozen).

Focus: article yeast producing sugars at low temps

Googling yeast and trehalose provides a lot of articles, it seems beer yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) has had the most study. Dropping the yeast to under 10C promotes trehalose production which guards against heat shock, most of the articles start off by saying "trehalose use to be thought of as only a carbohydrate food source....but....".

Appears to be a lot of method to the maddness of cold pitching, which I've started to use after having problems with yeast that I'd abused.

 

[neonmeate]

i've been routinely cold-pitching for the last year and a half since i read cj_in_j talking about it on another forum. works brilliantly - not that i've done side by side tests but since taking it straight out of the fridge is easier than carefully getting it to the same temp as the wort, i don't really care as long as it works. i love it when lazy methods turn out to have benefits!

 

[jayse]

Hi brewers,
I have been doing this for sometime now, mainly because iam lazy <_<
I cool my primary fermentors down to about 6c then on brewday i rack the beer to a keg and take a bit less than a pint of slurry and chuck it straight in and wait for it to start launching itself out the airlock.
I don't have any technical info but as you see noone else really does have a hell of a lot of data on it either.

Iam just posting to say i do this and it works great, i can't say if it works better than if the slurry was 16c because really i can't tell any difference.
One thing i do always though and i think most brewers do or should do is pitch when the wort is a few degrees below fermenting temp NOT a few degrees higher like many brewers do.

Cheers 'Cold pitching slurry using'
Jayse

 

[BeerIsGood]

Yeast doesn't like rapid downward change in temperature. Does anyone anticipate any problems with rapidly cooling a room temperature starter (as described above) in the fridge to use for cold pitching? Or is it OK because the starter has finished its own fermentation?

To quote the original article: "Once the starter is fermented out, I put it in the fridge and cold pitch the next day." This is certainly not a controlled "2C per day" type of cooling, is it?

I am particularly interested in using this method for starting a lager at lager fermentation temp's and not doing the whole warm start, slow cool, ferment procedure.