First Dopple Bock, Out Door Fermentation

Hey folks! I plan on making my first dopple bock here soon, I tried Ayyingers Celebrator's before and I fell in love with it! I wanting to know the feasibilty of using the White Labs San Fransisco Lager to produce a good dopple bock with the somewhat limited temp control that I have.

This is from the White Labs site:

This yeast is used to produce the "California Common" style beer. A unique lager strain which has the ability to ferment up to 65 degrees while retaining lager characteristics. Can also be fermented down to 50 degrees for production of marzens, pilsners and other style lagers.
Attenuation: 65-70%
Flocculation: High
Optimum Fermentation Temperature: 58-65°F
Alcohol Tolerance: Medium-High

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I am wanting to brew this beer two weeks from now, and use the dropping ambient temperatures to actually produce the beer I want.

I have a closet on my porch that I am wanting to use, I will probably get a tub of water to place my fermentation vessel inside of it to produce temperature stability.

Starting Two weeks from now, the average high where I live is 65F, with an overnight low of 42, and each week the average high and low drops by about 3 degrees so that by the end of November, the average high is 55 with a low of 35.

By the middle of December, the weather stabilizes pretty much and we have high's of 50 and low's of 30, and that holds all the way through the end of January with the exception of the average high dropping to the upper 40's.

What I am wondering is this, could I produce this beer in about two weeks, then just let it ride outside until the middle of January and have something that would be worth the effort? The current temperatures are perfect for the main fermentation, and it looks like the temps will drop to lager temps soon afterwards.

Can someone offer some advice on this?

I've never done outside fermentation. Going from 65 to 30 seems to be a pretty big change. I def would try it to see how it turns out. The outdoor brewing I've seen is in a cave/cellar situation that keeps a pretty consistent temp. I've seen folks wrap their carboy up in a blanket with a heat lamp. I know they also have those temp controller heating pads as well. The tub of water is a great idea as well to stabilize the temp. Good luck and keep us up to speed! Your recipe is making me thirsty by the way!

Glad you like the way the recipe looks, let me post some vital stats on it:

OG: 1.093
FG: 1.030
IBU: 19.4
SRM: 22.2
ABV: 8.25

I do feel that if I have a sufficently large tub of water, that the temp swings should level out quite nicely. I also think it's really neat how the weather here is starting from being warmer, and by the time I want to drink the beer, in January, it should be cold weather which is what you want in a lager, it should finish cold.

Does anyone have any threads they could point me towards as far as making a lager starter from liquid yeast?

Those temperature swings are going to wreak havoc on your yeast. You need to be able to at least maintain your primary fermentation temperature consistently within a few degrees in the optimal range of the yeast to have any chance at all. Lagering really needs to be done at close to freezing the whole time in order to get the effect you're looking for.

I am not really sure that a 23 degree daily air temp difference is really going to translate to more than a few degrees variance to my carboy that is going to be immersed in a a water bath. I was figuring that having the beer in a water bath would really minimize the temperature swings. Anyone have any data on this?

I don't think it will be a huge problem for your lagering but I definitely would not do that for primary fermentation. I'd be concerned about the temperature swing that first night arresting fermentation.

Alright, so what do you guys think then, do the primary fermentation inside the house in a tub water that is at about 55F until the gravity stabilizes then allow the beer to do it's thing outside until January in the closet, once again in a water bath?

Do some empirical research. Fill your carboy with water, place it in the tub and record the temperature changes. The temperature changes will probably be bigger with just water in the carboy, but it will give you an idea of how wide the temperature swings can be.

Yeah, I agree with above posters, that you should'nt definitely do the primary fermentation outside, because the temperature varies pretty drastically during day and night.
Lagering on the other hand ... ?

I will do an empirical test for sure, that seems to be much more practical than creating a model and trying to determine what will happen. If I need to, I will wrap the water bath up with some insulation to try and force the temp to be more stable in the winter. Does anyone have any recomendaitons on how to make a monster starter? Like how you step up from a vial to progessivly larger starters?

The best way would just be to make a normal sized starter and then use it to ferment a small batch of beer (however many gallons of starter you need for your big lager), and then use ALL of the yeast from that batch to ferment your doppelbock. The advantage to this method is you get extra beer out of it, instead of decanting tons of DME juice down the drain. Just keep your "stepper" beer lowish gravity, 1.040-1.050.

I have heard many people recomend that one actually double pitch when you make a high gravity lager, so use twice the size of the starter that mr. malty says that you should use.

If I were to follow this advice, I would need to make 3 gallons of 1.040 beer with my munich extract. What I would do next is take all the ingrediants I have listed, make a 5 gallon batch of beer, but let it boil way on down until it hit a volume of 2 gallons, and add that to the "starter beer" would there be any problem with doing that?

I believe Mr. Malty has a "lager" setting that should work for any gravity lager you choose- pitching rates are about double ale rates, or more, depending.

It does have a lager setting, I have read from others that they suggest doubling the lager pitching rate that they advocate for large lagers, any thoughts?