Ramping down for lagering...

I'm making a lager. I dropped my temperature faster than the recommended 2 degrees per day while ramping down after the diacetyl rest and was wondering if the yeast would floc out, leaving me with nothing to bottle with. I went from 66 to 44 at the recommended rate, but then just stuck it in the fridge. In less than 12 hours, it dropped to 36 degrees. (I thought low was the highest temperature setting for some reason, hence the sudden drop.) Anyway, after lagering should I consider adding some champagne yeast or something clean that works at cooler temps, or will I be fine as is?

Also, does the lagering period include the time it takes to get from d-rest to lager temps or do I mark my calendar when I hit the mid-30s? It took me 10 days to ramp down to lagering temps! And here I thought making a lager would be quick and cavalier (not)...

Thanks for any help.

You should be fine. You'll probably have to have more patience than normal during conditioning - I usually do.

I've never had to re-seed my lager beers for bottle conditioning.

I don't know about any widespread standard. I always include the ramp time in the total lagering time. But then again I tend to ramp it down then forget about it. Hell, I usually say, "What the hell's that?" and have to read my notes. Then I say, "Jesus, that's been there a while."

Bob

I pretty much go straight from the d-rest to crash cooling. I want the yeast to fall out, so I can keg it, force carb it, and get it into the kegerator for some lagering.

Bottling is different, though.

Thanks for getting back to me. I will be bottling, so crash cooling wouldn't be ideal for me. I guess it really doesn't matter one way or the other though if I was planning on following the advice on the homebrewwiki page and added some clean ale yeast to ensure even carbonation. I'm not patient, especially since it's my first lager, so that's the best route for me. Here's the quote from homebrewwiki:

Now you can either rack to a serving keg and force carbonate, in case you didn't do the force carbonation during lagering, or bottle. If you plan to bottle condition the beer you may want to add fresh yeast with the priming sugar, because the yeast present in the beer may not perform as well anymore. After all, it is about 7-6 weeks old. A quarter to half a pack of dry yeast properly hydrated is the easiest way at this point. It also doesn't matter if ale or lager yeast is used since the flavor profile of the beer has already been determined by the yeast used for the primary fermentation. If you don't add fresh yeast you need to be more patient with the conditioning of the beer. Let the beer carbonate at room, primary fermentation temperature or anywhere between. The higher the temperature is, the faster the beer will carbonate.

Thanks again!

Cpt_Kirks said:

I pretty much go straight from the d-rest to crash cooling. I want the yeast to fall out, so I can keg it, force carb it, and get it into the kegerator for some lagering.

Bottling is different, though.

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I bottle. I ferment lagers cold (<50), d-rest @ 65, then straight to 30 for a week. I get ice in the bottom of my chest freezer.

Then straight to bottle. No extra yeast. No problem. I get good heading carb in 1 wk, body carb in 2.

Just an update on an ancient thread (I hate leaving them incomplete in case people want to use them as a reference):

I did not re-seed the yeast and I experienced carbonation problems. At first, I attributed it to the beer warming to almost room temperature during bottling while I had calculated the amount of priming sugar based on the mistaken assumption that the beer would remain close to lagering temperature and thus that the residual CO2 would mostly remain dissolved in the beer. It turns out that after about a year in the bottle, the carbonation has become much closer to normal. So, I'm attributing it to the yeast floccing out during my 6 week lagering period (much different from 1 week, apparently).

In the future: re-seed with dry yeast during bottling OR bottle immediately after the diacetyl rest and lager in the bottle. Either way, I'll have a yeast sediment and have to pour carefully, so I'll just settle for a little extra hop and protein sediment and little extra care in pouring. And that way, I won't sacrifice a fermenter and a temp controlled chamber for such a lengthy period. Those 10 weeks really screwed up my pipeline!

For lagers, do you D-rest, then transfer to secondary, then bring down to 35 or do you D-rest, bring down to 35, then transfer to secondary??
-Matt

robertjohnson said:

Just an update on an ancient thread (I hate leaving them incomplete in case people want to use them as a reference):

I did not re-seed the yeast and I experienced carbonation problems. At first, I attributed it to the beer warming to almost room temperature during bottling while I had calculated the amount of priming sugar based on the mistaken assumption that the beer would remain close to lagering temperature and thus that the residual CO2 would mostly remain dissolved in the beer. It turns out that after about a year in the bottle, the carbonation has become much closer to normal. So, I'm attributing it to the yeast floccing out during my 6 week lagering period (much different from 1 week, apparently).

In the future: re-seed with dry yeast during bottling OR bottle immediately after the diacetyl rest and lager in the bottle. Either way, I'll have a yeast sediment and have to pour carefully, so I'll just settle for a little extra hop and protein sediment and little extra care in pouring. And that way, I won't sacrifice a fermenter and a temp controlled chamber for such a lengthy period. Those 10 weeks really screwed up my pipeline!

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I would argue that was the reason it didn't carb up well. The reason it didn't carb up well is that you underprimed.

When you use a priming calculator, you don't use the temperature that the beer is at currently. You use the highest temperature the beer was at during/after fermentation. The reason is simple when you think about it- co2 is only produced when fermentation is happening, not during storage. If the beer was at 60 degrees (or more) during the diacetyl rest, much more co2 would have disipated than if the beer was at 50 degrees the whole time. Once the beer is lagered, it certainly won't "gain more" co2.

So, for lagers, add the correct amount of priming sugar- generally about 4-5 ounces in a five gallon batch.

You need to prime with the correct amount of priming sugar- approximately 4-5 ounces for 5 gallons.

pennisim said:

For lagers, do you D-rest, then transfer to secondary, then bring down to 35 or do you D-rest, bring down to 35, then transfer to secondary??
-Matt

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I also do the diacetyl rest, then rack and begin lagering.

From what I understand you should use the highest temp the beer was at during fermentation for calculating the amount of priming sugar to use. I agree with Yooper, sounds like it was more than likely a calculation problem and not a yeast problem. I've crash cooled lagers and bottled after the lagering period with no yeast/carbonation issues.

Yooper said:

I also do the diacetyl rest, then rack and begin lagering.

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Have you ever let it settle and then racked and pitched? I was reading a site whose content would not be welcome here and one guy claims he gets better 'product' with this method. I would think it would matter less to them than us beer makers. No way to tell if his reports are accurate though.

Hermit said:

Have you ever let it settle and then racked and pitched? I was reading a site whose content would not be welcome here and one guy claims he gets better 'product' with this method. I would think it would matter less to them than us beer makers. No way to tell if his reports are accurate though.

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I haven't- but I also only siphon out clear wort when I make a lager. Most of my ales are not really strained, just "debris free" enough to not clog up my bump. My lager worts are crystal clear going into the fermenter so I don't really have much hot break/cold break/hops debris going into the fermenter.

I know some lager makers will chill the wort, and then siphon out the clear wort to make sure the hot break is removed. I always feel that the least steps, the better, for brewing. Another racking is more opportunity for something to go wrong, in my opinion.

I've never given this any thought, I just bottle lager as normal and it always comes out just fine. My latest batch is completely clear and the remaining yeast has settled in the secondary during lagering. I intend to bottle it with about 5 ounces of priming sugar as I didn't know to do otherwise.

I'm expecting this beer to come out completely clear and correctly carbonated.

Hey, thanks for the the replies. I'm about to bottle lager a Cal Common that was fermented with Salfager 23 at about 56,* I'll either post a few updates here or create a new thread.

@pennism: +1 on doing the D-rest before transferring to secondary for bulk aging. The D-rest helps the yeast clean everything up and ferment out, so a) the more yeast you have around for the rest, the better and b) i usually try not to rack the beer while it is still fermenting and since you want to do the D-rest before reaching terminal gravity, which means the yeast should still be working, i'd advise against transferring before the D-rest.

@everyone else: I'm with ya that it is in part a calculation error, but it seems odd that the beer has continued to slowly carbonate over the past 6 months to 1 year. This to me indicates that there was inadequate yeast in suspension at the time of bottling, which could have been avoided by re-seeding.
BTW, I might suggest allowing the lager to warm a bit closer to room temp so you can better predict the actual temperature of the beer at the time of bottling. Haven't done it myself though, so can't speak from experience there.