Lagering in primary

I have an Oktoberfest lager that I was planning on bottling today, but I think I lagered it in the primary fermenter. I think I should have transferred it over to secondary when I dropped the temps to lager it. It's been on the yeast cake for about 6 weeks now - 2 weeks at 54 degrees for fermentation, and 4 weeks lagering at 34 degrees. What should I expect from this batch?

Thanks

The problem with leaving on a yeast cake is potential off-flavors from potential autolysis. Cold temperatures decrease the risk of autolysis. So I would guess if you get off-flavors in that batch, they won't be from leaving it in the primary for 6 weeks.

should be fine.
if people are leaving ales in the primary for a 4-6 weeks, you
d have to assume that a lager in that long would present any problems.

where is that article that was posted several times about length in primary and autolysis being something to not really worry about?

First of all, you'll probably be fine. Don't worry.

That said, six weeks is starting to push it for sitting on the yeast, in my opinion. If the yeast is healthy and you treat it well, it can probably last for 2-3 months before it starts producing autolysis off-flavors. But if the yeast is not healthy, that can happen much sooner (I had one of the bad batches of Nottingham that autolysed in less than a month). Since autolysis is one of the nastiest off-flavors that can't really be fixed, it's best to err on the side of caution and avoid leaving beer on the yeast for longer than a month or so - at least in my opinion.

dstamper441 said:

I have an Oktoberfest lager that I was planning on bottling today, but I think I lagered it in the primary fermenter. I think I should have transferred it over to secondary when I dropped the temps to lager it. It's been on the yeast cake for about 6 weeks now - 2 weeks at 54 degrees for fermentation, and 4 weeks lagering at 34 degrees. What should I expect from this batch?

Thanks

Click to expand...

I wouldn't lager on the yeast cake, but people have done it and been pleased with the outcome. I wouldn't worry about it, but would recommend racking off the cake after d-rest next time.

Autolysis is a non-issue for most homebrewers, but why push your luck.

IIRC, this batch was still fermenting when I made 2 more ales--3 batches going at once. I only have 3 fermenters, so no place to rack into secondary. Now after all this time, I can't recall if I ever moved it over. I checked this morning, it didn't reek--so we'll see.

Can I ask what your process was? Lagering sometimes means different things to people.

pickles - The process was as simple as possible - mash, sparge, boil, ferment in the refrigerator, then all I did to lager was crank down the thermostat to 34 degrees.

I did not know there was another use of the term lagering, or I would have described my situation in more detail.

What temp did you ferment at? Typically lager yeast strains take a bit longer to ferment, about 3 weeks, due to the low fermentation temps. So if its 6 weeks total that really isn't that big of a deal. When I lager, I rack into secondary when I'm a few points away from FG, but that could be up to 4 weeks from the time I pitched the yeast. Then due diecetyl rest between 65F and 70F for a few days, then begin lagering at 34F. The residual yeast will clean up alot of that byproducts. My point is that my lagers sit on some of the yeast for a few months depending on the beer.


Some people confuse fermenting at low temperatures with lagering, I was just trying to get a timeframe of events. I'm definately not implying you don't know what you're doing. Cold maturation is the simpliest form of lagering, it can also include diacetyl rests, adding less flocculent yeast to secondary, etc.

But, I'm still pretty clumsy when it comes to lagering. One entire batch turned into bottle bombs. The other batch, I pitched too low and had to warm it up to get the fermentation started.
This time, I didn't rack to a secondary at all, but I fermented for 2 weeks @ 54°F and lagered for 4 more @ 34°F. With no diecetyl rest

At this point, I am going to RDWHAHB, bottle it, give it some time, and hope for the best.

In the worst case, I will have 55 bottles of nasty, and every one I drink will remind me what not to do next time. Best case, it turns out fine.

This is a terrific hobby. Thanks for the responses.

It'll be fine, at that temp it probably was 75% complete, so its more like 3 weeks longer and that might even be a bit liberal. I would definately recommend a rest, it will clean up lots of flavors tour never really noticed. Plus is simple to do.

dstamper441 said:

But, I'm still pretty clumsy when it comes to lagering. One entire batch turned into bottle bombs. The other batch, I pitched too low and had to warm it up to get the fermentation started.
This time, I didn't rack to a secondary at all, but I fermented for 2 weeks @ 54°F and lagered for 4 more @ 34°F. With no diecetyl rest

At this point, I am going to RDWHAHB, bottle it, give it some time, and hope for the best.

In the worst case, I will have 55 bottles of nasty, and every one I drink will remind me what not to do next time. Best case, it turns out fine.

This is a terrific hobby. Thanks for the responses.

Click to expand...

Since it's still in primary I would do a diacetyl rest. Just let the beer warm up to 70 and keep it there for several days. Then you can bottle/keg.

The best resource I've found is on this site's own wiki, and the portion of it that applies (IMHO) is this: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/Fermenting_Lagers#Maturation_of_the_beer

If you ferment without a d-rest, it's probably best to lower the temp gradually to keep from shocking the yeast into dormancy, to allow them to finish off the diacetyl on their own and take the gravity all the way down. If you use a d-rest, then you can crash cool without any worries about the yeast, because they're done.

That said, your yeast at 54 degrees might have been done, or you may not have shocked them completely, and you could be fine. But just something to keep an eye on in the future.