n00b question - pitch yeast at 100degrees

RDWHAHB

 

Yeast are living organisms and you will kill them at a certain temperature. At a minimum you made them less viable by pitching at such a high temperature. You should have put the wort in your sanitized fermentor overnight and pitched in the morning.

Check it later today and tomorrow and see if there is any fermentation activity. If not, pitch more yeast.

Make sure you address your ability to chill your wort before your next brew. Even pitching over 70 is not ideal for most yeast strains.

 

Yes. The importance of wort temperature decreases over time

 

Temp is less important during the adaptation (lag) phase, most important during the growth phase, and least important as things wind down during the conditioning phase. That said, obviously too hot or too cold is not good regardless.

The lag phase can last anywhere between 3-15 or more hours (I feel like my last one was somewhere around 20, as opposed to the one before it that seemed to kickoff within 6 hours). Yeast strain and temp will play a role there. Your hotter temp likely could have given you a shorter lag phase. Yeast can also generate 5-10 degrees of heat when active. They say fusels are produced at temperatures over 80.

To be honest, I'm not even sure how quickly it would chill just left in ambient, espcially inside where the drop may have been slower. My ferm chamber recently took like 4 hours just to drop 10 gallons from around 78 to 65.

Also, If you don't see any activity, don't assume it didn't ferment. It very well could have ripped through overnight or while you were out today. I recommend looking for visibal signs like a krausen ring and taking a hydrometer reading.

In the end though, the answer really is as simple utahbeerdude said, RDWHAHB. What are you going to do to change things now anyway? Might as well let it ride. If you wind up with some fusel bomb, you get to taste first hand an off flavor you can avoid in the future. On the other hand, maybe everything played out just good enough.

The first beer I ever did (maybe 8+ years ago) was a Mr. Beer kit and I just found a dark spot in my basement. It did not come out so well. Fermenation temp control is key for improving beer.

Side note, what did you actually brew?

 

Just a suggestion, but tubs full of water are great for cooling wort. That is what I do in the summer.

 

Was hoping you would say a saison and we could all laugh and breath a sigh of relief. Those strains can take the higher temps (but still best to cool down to a more normal pitch temp and let it rise into the 80s or more).

Time will tell.

 

I don't think you'll have to worry too much about off flavors with an IPA, assuming you don't cellar/age it any. You likely have it a touch of hot side aeration putting it into the fermenter at 100*, not a horrible thing, but you may taste some increasing slight cardboard flavor as the beer matures over time- but I'd think the nugget/Columbus bittering hops might mask that in flavor the short term.

Get some 3/8 copper tubing (12-20") with some brass swedge fittings from Home Depot and make you an immersion chiller. It would take about 30 mins for me with the outdoor spigot cracked to a slow trickle of cold water to chill a 5-6 gallon boil down to 75*. You will want to shoot for cooler temps to pitch yeast, beer just tastes better in my experience that way, 60-75 was always my sweet spot. This is why I wait till fall to brew, when my garage/brew house would get below the 70s for good fermentation.

 

Any potential damage has already been done. since you are already at 68, the only thing to do now is wait it out. Give it a few more days in the primary than normal to clean up potential off flavors

 

Is that possible since he started out very warm.

 

You left your wort for 3 hours and it was still at 100 degrees? If that's what your thermometer was saying you should really look into getting a new one that does not sound accurate at all

 

Yes to some off flavors and no to others. Unfortunately fusel alcohol takes a long time to dissipate