German Brewing

Unfortunately, the colder I can cool my wort to in a reasonable time is about 55-57 degrees. Any thoughts on pitching at that temp and cooling to 41 over about 6 hours then letting it free rise to 48? The alternative would be cool to only 48 and then proceed with the remainder of the cold ferm schedule.

I wouldn't pitch at 57 and then cool to 41.

I would probably add just a little yeast to the wort whole cooling it, and add a little of the wort to the main bulk of the yeast to bring it up from presumably fridge temp at 38 to the mid 40s. This can give the yeast a bit of a chance to wake up closer to the ideal pitching temperaure while the wort cools, and the little bit of yeast added to the wort can hopefully scavenge oxygen while its cooling. After a couple hours the wort should hopefully be at 48-50 degrees, so I would pitch the yeast then and set the regulator to 48.

It's not optimal, but it should work. The goal is to avoid shocking the yeast.

Why can't you chill all the way to pitch temps?

How long is it taking you gentleman to cool to 41-42 degrees? I looked back at my brewpi and I did start at 52.5 degrees so it wasn't as bad as 57 in my initial post.

You shouldn't be using ice until you can't chill with groundwater anymore. Chill with groundwater and then use ice. Chilling from boiling with ice is a waste of ice.

You must be in a hot climate. I've got 50-60 °F groundwater in central NY

I've got mid 70s groundwater right now in Boston. It also gets harder to chill the bigger the batch size. I had to resort to the method I described above when I brewed this past Friday evening.

Obviously, brewing lagers in the NE winter is a lot easier