Slow Wort Chill

[ricardo]

Just did a brew and everything went fine until I forgot to turn the water on for the plate chiller, by the time I realised about 4 litres of boiling wort had been pumped to the fermenter. After turning the water on the temp for the whole batch of 20 litres ended up at 33 Celsius. I put the fermenter straight in the freezer under temperature control, it's now been 2 hours and it is only down to 24 Celsius and I'm going to pitch at 20 Celsius.

Question is what is the longest time you can take chilling wort without spoiling the beer?

 

[indica86]

Depends on how well everything is sanitised. Others will argue with that.
I'd say either pitching now or waiting will not overly change the outcome.

 

[lukiferj]

Should be fine. I quite often pitch a bit higher and let it drop in the fridge once I've pitched. As long as it's not high for too long it will be fine. A couple of hours without yeast should be ok too if you're careful.

 

[Bribie G]

I often pitch a few degrees higher as the yeast, initially, is waking up and breeding up, any off flavours such as fusels and unwanted esters won't start appearing until it gets into the anaerobic fermentation phase, by which time your wort will be at the right temperature. If anything it will kick things along more quickly as yeast loves 30+ degrees, just that we don't let it, cruel brewers that we are.

 

[lukiferj]

Bribie G explains it better

 

[huez]

My last couple of batches ive chilled it down to around 24 25 and then got the rest of the way in the freezer. No adverse effects yet. First time i pitched at 22 because i was stressing out about letting it sit for a couple hours, but as bribie has suggested it kicked off rather quickly and turned out fine

 

[ricardo]

i ended up waiting 3.5 hours for it to chill all the way down to 20 before pitching which is just at the top end of the optimal temperature range for the yeast. I'll take a sample at the weekend and should get a good idea from that if it's going to turn out OK

 

[SNippets01]

All my brews that I've done (5 or 6), I haven't used any wort chilling device - I've just let the wort air cool down enough from the boil to drop out a bit of the trub (30mins to 1hr basically after it looks clearer). Then transfer the wort to my stanitised fermenter and put in my temp cooled freezer to drop down to the required temperature. Check the next morning (or night if i'm in a hurry off to work in the morning) and add in the yeast after a good shake-up.

Never had any major issues so far with any of my brews. (no infections or off flavours). *edited for spelling and clarity.