Lagering in snow?

Planning ahead for the depths of winter, when I like to do a pilsner. it just occurred to me: what about lagering by burying the secondary in a snow bank? I would split the batch and only bury a 2.5 gallon better bottle, and I imagine I would seal the top and place the carboy in a bag. Get it out there in early February and dig it up in mid-march?

I figure if the BB cracks, it's only half a batch.

Is this something anyone has tried?

May want to rig up a better blow-off tube style airlock. Being outside, I'd be afraid the water would evap or bugs would crawl in some how.

The first lager that I've read about (Oktoberfest) was brewed in early spring, and then placed in the icehouse where ice was stored for the summer. The snowbank method will probably work as long as enough snow is piled around the fermenter to insulate it from actually freezing. Let us know haow it turns out.

How consistent will the temperature be? Does your snow stick around for weeks once it falls? If so, it's probably doable. If the temperature goes below 32º for extended periods, you'll probably have issues. How did you plan on doing the initial fermentation at around 50º?

Sounds like a cool experiment, I would just have a few concerns to figure out first.

I should have plenty of snow, I'm in SE Wisconsin. I figure I'll bury the carboy within snowblower range of my driveway, so after I bury it the first time I would be throwing more snow on top with each subsequent snowfall. There is the risk of temperatures getting too low after I first bury it under 1-2 feet of snow, but after a while there could easily be 6 feet on it. I think I'll just totally seal the carboy and take my chances on not having an airlock. Once the liquid in an airlock freezes, it's the same thing anyway.

Fermentation temps aren't a problem. I ferment in my passively cooled wine cellar. It's always 48-51 degrees in winter and tops out at 62 in the summer.

I was thinking of the same method myself, Im in upstate NY and once we have the snow falling its here for good till near the end of March if we are lucky. Ive been wanting to do a lager for sometime now and this is probably my best option at this time.

You'll need to protect it from light and from freezing solid. I'm working on something for this winter on a sunporch.

A simple suggestion is just a brute garbage can like this that can hold and cover the carboy.



Water in the bottom will help to act like an insulator, but you'll need to make sure it doesn't freeze solid, so one idea is an aquarium heater.

Another option would be putting the carboy in a box in there and placing christmas rope lights inside (the box would protect the beer from the light) and the rope lights would give off heat. You could hook it up to a timer to go off for a few minutes every few hours to keep it warm.

Put a pole in the ground next to it so you can find it if necessary and so no one plows your drive and shoves the snowout into your yard.
Get a cheap wired thermometer that you could check throughout the winter to see how it is staying. You could put the readout up on the post. Then if it gets too cold, kick on Revvy's lights. I also like the trash can idea to keep it cleaner.

Secondary in a corny keg. That way its all sealed up and basically unbreakable.

Im interested in this idea and if we get a couple weeks of heavy snowfall this year in my area I may try it if only for the fact that I can name the brew "Snowbank Lager"

You should put it in a container that creates airspace around it. Keep it dry. DO NOT buffer the temperature with water. Think igloo. If there is enough snow pack on it, it will remain at 32. Snow insulates from below freezing temps as well as keeping it cold.

Resurrecting a dead thread here, but I figured I'd let anyone who is interested that I finally got enough snow to try this out.

It's funny, it seems that the combination of my proposing the "lager in snow bank" idea and buying snowshoes guaranteed that the winter of 2012 would bring the lowest snowfall ever. It was nuts, I never had enough snow (maybe 4 inches) to use my snowshoes, didn't use my snowblower after the first week of January, it barely got cold enough in my wine cellar to ferment a lager all winter, and I played my first round of golf on March 12.

This year seemed like the same thing, until "blizzard 2013" hit last week. I happened to have a pilsner fermenting anyway, and I had a spot with enough snow down (maybe 15 inches of snowfall, 36 inches after snowblower piles) to try lagering it in the snow.

I put 3 gallons in a BB, have the airlock filled with vodka so it should stay liquid, put a freezer bag loosely over the airlock and taped in place, then put the whole thing in a large heavyweight black garbage bag, folded over and taped closed. I dug a hole in the snow deep enough that it would have buried my 4 year old (had to have someone finish digging) and now that fermenter is buried treasure.

The 10 day forecast suggests that the snow will stick around for a little bit (daily highs ranging from 30 to 40, overnight lows in the high 20s consistently) with a little more snow maybe tossed in there. So I might get 3 weeks of lagering in there before the fermenter sees the light of day.

I'll be back with a taste test between lagering in the snow and the fridge (the other 2 gallons are lagering in a Mr Beer) in a few weeks. I figure ill see how long lagering in the snow lasts and as long as it is a semi reasonable amount of time (say 3 weeks) I will bottle both halves of the batch at the same time. If this outdoor lagering trick only lasts a few days .... I'll figure it out then.

Pretty jacked up that I was playing golf by mid March last year and am depending on the snow sticking around this year. I prefer last year.

Good luck, but I bet that beer is going to freeze.

kpr121 said:

Secondary in a corny keg. That way its all sealed up and basically unbreakable.

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I know this is an old post, but there are plenty of cases where a corny has literally ripped apart due to the expanding (freezing) liquid inside.

You could track your your lagering temp with a wireless outdoor thermometer. We recently purchased an indoor/outdoor unit at Cabela's for $10.00.

zachattack said:

I know this is an old post, but there are plenty of cases where a corny has literally ripped apart due to the expanding (freezing) liquid inside.

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Understood, but I thought the idea was to not let the beer freeze.... of course better bottles are cheap and cornies aren't as cheap at they were in 2011. Actually cornies used to be less expensive that bbs. Damn I miss those days!

With hindsight, I will say that today I would use a bb.

What is going to stop it from freezing?

cooldood said:

What is going to stop it from freezing?

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Did you read all the posts?

olllllo said:

Snow insulates from below freezing temps as well as keeping it cold.

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Snow is an insulator, due to it having so much air in it.

However, snow and ice can and do get below their freezing/melting point, just like any other solid in existence.

Ehhhhhhhh, you'll be fine. I say go for it and see what happens. Please post results with pics. I'm highly interested to see how it turns out. Good luck.

Well, I figured that with 28 days of lagering in the bank and temperatures expected to warm up a bit here, it was time to dig it up.

The results appear to be an unqualified success.

I never got much more snow after burying the carboy, but all of March was oppressively cold. It hardly ever got into the 40's and we had multiple nights with overnight lows in the single digits and highs in the low 20's. There were about 12-18 inches of snow piled on the carboy at the start and we never got much more, maybe it snowed 3-4 times totaling about an inch all month. The last couple of days it has been in the low 40's but below freezing at night.

The 3 gallon Better Bottle had been wrapped in a heavyweight black contractor bag, folded over and taped closed. I had also put a freezer back loosely over the airlock and taped that in place around the neck.

When I dug the carboy out, there was still 8-12 inches of snow/ice on it and it had shifted about 30 degrees onto its side.

Inside the garbage bag, the exterior of the fermenter was totally clean and dry. The airlock was still in place and still had vodka in it. The beer level had not dropped at all, so there was no evaporation. It appears the fermenter stayed as airtight as it could be.

The lagering was a success -- a lot of yeast had fallen out and it has a very bright, clear color. There was no ice in the beer. The carboy doesn't seem to be structurally compromised at all. I put it in a 5 gallon bucket in my basement while I wait for bottling time, just to be sure. After I got inside I took the cap off and gave it a sniff -- smells great.

So it seems that this method of lagering (assuming it tastes good a month from now) will work just fine as long as you have enough snow. I did this with what I would consider the bare minimum of snow covering the beer and it faced temperatures that got lower than I expected. If you can get 3-4 feet of snow on top of the fermenter it should be able to handle a couple of months out there and the occasional below zero cold snap shouldn't be a problem.

Be sure to have the carboy pressed into a solid base of packed snow to reduce the risk that it could shift and roll over too much. A 5 gallon carboy might be heavy enough to keep this from happening while my 3-gallon floated on the snow a little.

I can't guarantee that no ice ever formed in the beer, but even if it did it wasn't enough to burst the carboy or stick around until I dug it up. But just to be safe (and because glass would be really heavy) I recommend doing this with better bottles.

Final verdict in a month when the beer is ready, but if it works out then I can't wait until next winter to try this again. Hopefully we get snow before the last week of February then!

Good show. I may do my first lager next winter.

Cool!

Is it wise to make a first post a resurrection of a thread? IDK. But here it is. I've made a few brews in my short experience and have surfed the forum a little. I'm making my first non kit beer, happens to be a lager (as opposed to the ease of the ales I've done) and gonna lager it in a snow bank in my yard. Unlike what has happened in this thread before, I will let you know if I fail or succeed. Maybe if I figure out how to post pics I'll show you how I buried my secondary under 5 feet of snow. Should be a consistent temp down there. Probably not the best "first" experiment in brewing but what the hell.

Snow bank is a cool idea. I just pulled a Bohemian Pilsner out of the garage and it lagered perfect and crisp in this insanely cold New York winter we're having. Leaving it in the garage seems much easier than all that shoveling. Its next to the house but not well insulated. I assume it was 30s-40s there for about a month.

I would go further and dig a hole in the ground big enough to fit your fermentation vessel, line it with plywood and put a wooden cover, then cover with snow.

That way the ground will regulate the temp better and you can keep a better control of accidental contamination or crushing.

OP here, I've been out of the homebrewing loop for a long time but I figure I'll chime in on this --

The snowbank lager was a resounding success. Best lager I've ever made.

But the key was burying it IN the snow. Leaving it in a garage will work but you don't have the temperature control -- it might get too warm or too cold, more likely too warm. Burying it in some sort of contraption that allows airspace (like a garbage can or a box) would allow for it to get too cold very easily. The layer of snow around the beer is an insulator and keeps the temperature right at 32 degrees, and with enough snow on top then it wont go lower no matter what the ambient temp is and it wont get warmer as long as there is several inches of cover on top.

I wouldn't worry about the weight of snow crushing the carboy, they are designed to take a lot of pressure (from the inside out, granted, but still).

I live in MN and lagered a doppelbock in my unheated breezeway this winter. A garage would work well too. I just used an stc-1000 and heat tape. It was all in a large cooler that only sees summertime use.

Here's the burial. I apologize they're sideways. I'm computer dumb. ..well phone dumb

I think there's enough snow on top and around. At least 5 feet what I figured

Pulled it out of snow today to keg. In snow bank 2/28/15 out 4/8/15. Still liquid. Now a question? First time k egging too...go figure. Should I prime with dextrose or carb with CO2 so I can keep it cold? Any thought or info are greatly appreciated. I will post some pics later.

Also ....it's an American style lager. Yes, I'm blasphemous

Here's dig out day

Oh wow... you risked a glass carboy on that? Thats pretty ballsy. I would have gone for a better bottle like the OP to risk the possible breaks... Still very cool that you all did that.

I'd say keep it cold and force carb.

I figured there was some risk but it was an experiment. I am priming it with dextrose. ...maybe force carb next time. Course I hope we never see that amount of snow without melt ever again.

:smack:....color and clarity were fantastic. ...got the damn green apple taste though. Thought I did a good D rest. Tastes like a cider and gives a buzz...so I can deal with it I guess