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Pitching temp for a lager

Slobrew

Master Brewer
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Beverly Hills, Florida
I"ve been homebrewing for years but will be making my first lager this week. So, I have a couple of questions.

1) My recipe calls for fermenting at 54 degrees F, which is fine, but what temp do I do the actual pitch of the yeast. I live in Florida so no way I'm going to get my batch to less than about 77 - 80 degrees with an emersion chiller. My plan was to just pitch it at 77 - 80F or as cool as I can get it and then put it in the fridge to bring it down to 54F. Is this the way to go?

2) For my yeast starter. I normally start this at room temp for ales, do I do the same for lagers?
 
I'd wait until it's close to 60 before pitching. Remember that the yeast produces heat as it ferments. If the yeast gets going before the brew has had time to fully cool, it may not cool until fermentation is done. So the entire fermentation could happen in the 60s or 70s, even though the fridge is much cooler than that. I've gone down to my basement and read the temperature on the wall, then looked at the fermometer stuck to the side of the carboy full of fermenting lager. Sometimes it has been as much as six degrees higher than room temperature. So if you're planning to ferment at 54 degrees, you probably want the fridge to be closer to 50.
 
I'm in Florida too so I know what your up against.  Checked the groundwater yesterday.  82F.  I used to chill as best I could then put the fermenter in the fridge overnight to get to where it should be, holding off on the pitch till the next day.  I do my starters wherever the AC is set, low 70's.  Much lower than that and you wont get as much growth.  When ready to pitch the next day I would put the starter in the ferment fridge for a few hours in the morning til its close to the wort temp. You can also pump ice water thru your immersion if you have a pump.  That never got me cold enough but its better than groundwater. I switched to a counterflow chiller fed with ice water you can get to lager temps in one pass. I get around 52F in the dead of summer.
 
My mashing cooler does double duty as the first stage of a two step immersion chilling system. I fill it with ice water and put another immersion chiller in it. The water  goes through the ice bath first then directly to the wort chiller. You can get the primary chiller down a few more degrees by covering it with ice and rock salt, ala ice cream maker. Just don't add water and let the salt melt the ice into a brine.
 
I'm in Florida also. I can get my wort down to about 80 with my well water (exhaust water used to clean the mash tun), then I drop two one-gallon chunks of ice into the mash tun (ten-gallon Igloo water cooler) with just enough water to cover the spigot, and pump the ice water through my immersion chiller and back into the cooler. The system takes 5 - 6 gallons down to 45F in about 30 minutes. Stirring will speed up the process, but it cools just fine while I read.
 
Well this is what I finally did. Brewed today, then I chilled the wort with an emersion chiller and got it down to about 92 F and it was not going to go much further in a reasonable amount of time. So, I pulled out the chiller and threw in two sanitized blue icepacks. That got it down to about 87 F. Put it in the fermenter and then put the fermenter in the fermenting fridge at 50 F, once it got down to about 75 F I pitched the yeast at the same temp and put it back in the fridge. Now we will just have to wait and see how it turns out.
 
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