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Cold Crashed a Fresh Batch

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  • Cold Crashed a Fresh Batch

    Hey all...so here's my goof up...

    Yesterday I brewed an Imperial IPA. Brew was normal, knocked out to 72F, oxygenated, transferred to my FV, pitched yeast (Mangrove Jack's M44), and closed up shop. Today when I came into the brewery I found that the temperature control never got reset to fermentation temp and was still at 34F. So now I'm semi freaking out about what to do.

    Am I out of luck? Do I just let it naturally rise to fermentation temp and hope for the best? Do I try to run a loop through my heat exchanger and bring it back to temp faster?

    It's a 3.5bbl batch, so it's not like it has a lot of thermal mass to overcome.

    Please somebody tell me it's gonna be alright. Thanks

  • #2
    Heat Exchanger

    I've had this happen before, and heat exchanger is your best bet with warm water on the other end. Keep an eye on the wort temperature as it comes out of the heat exchanger, as you don't want to shock/kill the yeast. You might want to re-oxygenate, but I'll leave that to you. My batch started to kick off as soon as the temp got above 60 as I was cycling it.
    Mark Thomas
    Vault Brewing

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    • #3
      Thanks Mark!

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      • #4
        With such a small fermenter and presumably a pretty small loss from evacuating the jacket, I would circulate warm water through the jacket before I pushed/moved the wort itself around anymore.

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        • #5
          I second circulating warm water through the jacket, I would stay between 90-100 F so you don't shock anything too much. Had this happen on a 10bbl tank, used warm water left in my HLT to bring it up to 64 from 40. Took about 1.5 hours or so.

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          • #6
            Thanks for the suggestions. After looking at my options, my glycol setup I've now learned, has no great way to evacuate the jackets without making a big mess. So while less than ideal I opted for the heat exchanger method. Seems to have done the trick, fermenting away! Thanks again!

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            • #7
              I would keep a very close eye on that batch and make sure to not reuse yeast from the batch. Besides stressing out the yeast and possibly having issues with future generations there you said the glycol was left on from the last time you fermented in it. That means the glycol was on during your cleaning cycles and you may well not have as clean of a tank as normal. Probably not an issue, just something to keep in mind...
              Manuel

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              • #8
                Definitely not planning on reusing that yeast. The glycol wasn't left on, we disconnect the RTD between batches so no glycol was flowing to the tank. It was just a matter of not setting the temp controller back to fermentation temp between batches so when we plugged the RTD back in it wanted to be at 34F. Definitely gonna keep an eye on this batch anyway due to the number of variables it has already encountered. Thanks for the input! Cheers!

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                • #9
                  I've done that before I have my glycol hooked to me heat exchange and just heated up my glycol then ran that warm glycol though the jacket till the wort was warm again.

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