First lager very slow?

After plenty of ales under my belt, I'm trying my first lager. I built an icebox out of a nice 3/4" plywood, wheeled cabinet I found at the Habitat resale shop and lined it with 1" of polystyrene sheet from HD. I got it nice and sealed up. My conical fits nicely, or two stacked buckets. I'm making a German Pilsner using White Labs WLP800. Cabinet is holding the temps in the 55* range by using frozen bottles of water and changing them out every 24 - 36 hours.

I'm now into the 5th day and have seen no visible airlock activity. I popped the top off the conical and I have a foamy krausen, just not as "wild" as with my ales. I checked the gravity and I'm at ~1.040 having started at ~1.053. I can see little tiny streaming bubbles in the thief. Am I on track? Is it normal for the fermentation to be this "low and slow"? If so, at what gravity should I warm the beer up a bit to clean up any acetyls? At what temp? FG target is 1.012.

I plan to go into a corny when he's done and leave it in the kegerator for a month, then filter. My fridge is at about 40*. I have a corny lid which I have modified to accept a bubbler, but I'm thinking I'll just let it build pressure instead. The safety is always there if it gets too high.....

As an aside, I had FANTASTIC results with a Munich Helles that was supposed to be lagered but instead I used WLP029 ale yeast. I've also found that when I keg, pushing CO2 into the bottom (liquid) port to purge any O2 from the head space is quick and easy and gives a jump start to carbonating.

Thanks.

How big was the starter? It sounds like it was underpitched by quite a lot, as my lagers are generally about done in 7-10 days.

I do the diacetyl rest when the beer is about 75% of the way to FG, often about 1.020.

Lagers are indeed slower and less violent than ales, but I'm with Yooper and say this one is a little too slow. Mine slow down at about day 5 (usually D-rest time if I do one) and are finished in 7-10 days. I'm thinking underpitching too, especially since you're at the top end of temp. Give it a few more days, take another reading, and let it warm up to 60 or so once it hits 1.020.

Thanks guys. I pitched 1 vial for 5 gallons. It had been warmed up from refrigerator temperature for a couple of hours. It is the same procedure I always do for my ales. Do lagers require extra yeast? I just checked the vial and see that its expiration is in 1 month, so it's possible there was a % of dead guys in there....

spittybug said:

Thanks guys. I pitched 1 vial for 5 gallons. It had been warmed up from refrigerator temperature for a couple of hours. It is the same procedure I always do for my ales. Do lagers require extra yeast?

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You should pitch something like 1.5 million cells per degree Plato per ml of wort for your lagers. For new lager brewers, the simplest option is to use dry yeast. Don't worry about dry yeast being somehow "worse" than liquid--I won three BOS in 2013 and two of them were with dry lager yeast (S-23 and S-189). Just be sure to rehydrate properly.

Your ferm temperature was warm enough to give the yeast a fighting chance even though you probably pitched 15% of the cells you needed. Still, it looks like you are going to have trouble finishing off.

As an aside you should re-examine your pitching rates for ales. Go 0.75 to 1 million cells per ml per degree Plato per ml, although this can vary a bit for certain styles. Trust me, there is a difference in beer flavour between underpitched and properly pitched ales. I recently made a tripel, split the starter between two fermenters, and let it go. Must have gotten more cells into one of the fermenters; it took off more quickly and only finished about a point lower, but you can taste the difference.

Bottom line is that yeast pitching rates are very important to making the best possible beer. This is especially true for lagers.

Good luck!

osagedr said:

Bottom line is that yeast pitching rates are very important to making the best possible beer. This is especially true for lagers.

Good luck!

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This is key to a good lager! Pitching the correct amount of yeast at the correct temperature makes a huge difference. One of the ways that the yeast manufacturer try to help compensate for underpitching is to give instructions to pitch the yeast too warm (to get reproduction), and then chill the wort. That isn't the best way to make a good lager with a clean flavor.

In general, pitch enough yeast at UNDER the optimum fermentation temperature and let it rise up to the proper temperature. For example, if you're fermenting at 50 degrees, add 45 degree yeast to 48 degree wort, and then let it rise to 50 degrees. It seems to make the yeast happy, and fermentation will go well, and it produces an ultra clean flavor.

A proper pitch rate is far more yeast than you can imagine. For example, using the yeast pitching calculator at mrmalty.com, a 1.050 lager with yeast that is 3 weeks old (pretty darn fresh!), you'd need 4.3 packages of yeast, or a 9 liter starter. (Yes, 9 liters!!!) That's a lot more yeast than you used, that's for sure.
http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html

...then what's the best way to come up with that much starter? Stir plate step-up?

DanH said:

...then what's the best way to come up with that much starter? Stir plate step-up?

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Either dry yeast (easiest) or yes, stir-plate step-up. I now use the settings on yeastcalc.com with the Kai Troester (aka braukaiser) option selected.

osagedr said:

Either dry yeast (easiest) or yes, stir-plate step-up. I now use the settings on yeastcalc.com with the Kai Troester (aka braukaiser) option selected.

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Awesome thank you

Yooper said:

A proper pitch rate is far more yeast than you can imagine. For example, using the yeast pitching calculator at mrmalty.com, a 1.050 lager with yeast that is 3 weeks old (pretty darn fresh!), you'd need 4.3 packages of yeast, or a 9 liter starter. (Yes, 9 liters!!!) That's a lot more yeast than you used, that's for sure.
http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html

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Or brewing a lighter (<1.050 OG) beer first and rack the lager on top of the yeast cake, right? More beer, more yeast = win/win!

funnycreature said:

Or brewing a lighter (<1.050 OG) beer first and rack the lager on top of the yeast cake, right? More beer, more yeast = win/win!

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Maybe.

Overpitching can be an issue when using a whole yeast cake, so it's always best to use a pitching calculator if you don't have a way to actually count the yeast cells to get to the 1.5 million cells/degree of plato recommended.

You can always make the smaller beer, and use what you need from the yeast cake and save the rest in a sterilized jar in the fridge.

I too get my lagers to finish in 7-10 days (typ. 7 day fermentation plus a few days d-rest). I got this ONLY by increasing my yeast pitch rate-- back in the 90s before people made big lager starters, mine took 3 weeks too.

osagedr said:

Either dry yeast (easiest) or yes, stir-plate step-up. I now use the settings on yeastcalc.com with the Kai Troester (aka braukaiser) option selected.

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If you're doing a standard 1.050 type lager, you can also use 2 (relatively fresh) tubes or smack packs in a 2L starter, if you have a stirplate to get around the 400B cells necessary for 5 gallons without having to step it up.

g-star said:

If you're doing a standard 1.050 type lager, you can also use 2 (relatively fresh) tubes or smack packs in a 2L starter, if you have a stirplate to get around the 400B cells necessary for 5 gallons without having to step it up.

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Yessir. The yeast market in our city just got a bunch more competitive ($7.50 per smack pack vs. $13) so I am more likely to do that now.

Yooper said:

In general, pitch enough yeast at UNDER the optimum fermentation temperature and let it rise up to the proper temperature. For example, if you're fermenting at 50 degrees, add 45 degree yeast to 48 degree wort, and then let it rise to 50 degrees. It seems to make the yeast happy, and fermentation will go well, and it produces an ultra clean flavor.

Click to expand...

I've used this method since my first lager and even if slightly underpitched mine have been ready for d-rest (~1.018 ) in 4-5 days.

Even though I pitched a big starter ~7L (decanted, of course) into my first lager it showed little outward sign of activity relative to the ales I've done. Yet, it was more than 1/2 way to FG after just few days when I did a panic "nothing's happening" gravity check. WPL830, if memory serves me.

A Stir Plate is a great investment, especially for lager brewers. O2 injection also makes lagers clean, helps yeast health and allows it to clean up at the end of fermentation.

So here's what I did. I made Frankenbrew. With the consensus that I severely underpitched, I decided to throw in a pack of Safale US-05 ale yeast. Well, it liked what it encountered and has gobbled its way down to 1.008. I left the temperature in the low 60's.

Don't quite know how she'll taste, but the smell isn't dissimilar to what I'm used to at the stage of the process. Time for secondary. I'm not sure I'll continue down the lager road as my taste is for the ales anyway. Having the ability to ferment at a lower temp is nice, so the chill cabinet was certainly worth doing.

Next up; a double batch of my highly successful Munich Helles (as an ale). I can't keep enough of that on tap...