New freezer is in place and working well. Made roughly 18gal of john's Good Day to Die IPA yesterday with my Dad and it all went smooth this time around.
I decided this time around to use a blow off tube, mosty because of the aggressive fermentation I expect from this batch...and I'm still a little sour from my previous spunding experience.
I have a few points to share regarding wort aeration and yeast pitching that I've observed with repeated batches of beer. For some this might seem common knowledge and practice, but for others it might be that little bit of motivation to change their procedures a bit.
1. Aeration of Wort: I've brewed many batches of beer with and without aerating the wort before pitching yeast. Hands down, every time I aerated the wort, fermentation took off within 12-18 hours. I've observed fermentation lags of up to 36 hours when not aerating.
2. Yeast pitching Dry vs Hydrated: For the longest time I've just sprinkled dry yeast on top of the wort and have observed that it would take a considerable amount of time for the wort foam to collapse allowing the dry yeast to hydrate in the wort.
Recently, with the addition of a yeast stir plate, I've been pre hydrating the dry yeast in wateryeast nutrient for about an hour or so prior to pitching. The stir plate agitates and aerated the yeast slurry to the point that thick foam forms on the surface and climbs half way up the flask, like whipped milk. When pitching, the slurry instantly finds itself mixing with the wort.
With the combination of wort aeration and a yeast slurry, fermentation in this last batch took off like a rocket. 8-10 hours after pitching and the blow off tube is bubbling away quite vigorously in the bucket. This is, hands down, the fastest fermentation start I've observed in my brewery.
Needless to say, aerating wort and hydrating yeast is now common practice in the brewery.