Lager yeast at ale temperature

I am going to be brewing a california common soon. i know that anchor steam uses a lager yeast and ferments it at a higher temperature than is usually used for lagers. does anybody know how my beer will be if i use lager yeast and ferment it at 70 degrees?

Use Wyeast California Lager, but I wouldn't suggest fermenting it at 70. If you can get it down to 65, that'd be perfect. California lager yeast is meant to be fermented at "ale-ish" temps.

ya, that is my fear..i don't have anyway of controlling the temperature of my fermentation container, and my house sits at about 69.5 degrees. looks like I may have to use an ale yeast...

Definitely try to go cooler than 70F. For my first lager, I directed towards the San Fransisco lager yeast from Whitelabs (which is the same as the california lager mentioned above) because the LHBS guy new I didn't have temperature control and that strain would have the best chance of succeeding. It failed cause the fermentation was too farm. Even though the california lager strand is designed for warmer temperatures, they really mean 60-65 compared to 45-55 for other lager strains. If you can't get down to that range, I would use a clean ale yeast instead.

sounds good to me, thanks

smatson said:

ya, that is my fear..i don't have anyway of controlling the temperature of my fermentation container, and my house sits at about 69.5 degrees. looks like I may have to use an ale yeast...

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If you're house is at 70F, that's a reasonable temperature to try a cheap cooling method. You can try and get a big plastic storage tub at walmart, put your fermentor in it, fill it with water and add ice filled 2L bottles. You can switch the bottles as often as needed to try to get below 65F. A 5F differential should be easily achieved with this method.

I've been curious about this for a while. Getting back to the OP, what sort of FLAVORS, phenols, etc would a lager yeast produce at, say 60 degrees? I might have to try a small test batch with the same grain bill and yeast as some of my other, traditional lagers, but ferment right around 60.
Anyone else done this?

I got a lot of acidic flavors with lager yeasts at ale temps. Depending on the beer profile, it may come out as very citrusy all the way to plain vinegary in the extreme. I'm not exactly sure about the chemistry, but my guess is that lager yeast starts metabolizing alcohol and turning it into acetic acid. That's my personal experience.

You'll get an absolute truckload of sulfur, too, to the point where I don't think it'll get blown off/reabsorbed during fermentation.

fermenting lagers during the winter months is an easy thing provided you have a few things
1. live in a cold climate winter region
2. have a non-heated garage
3. minimal carpentry skills. ex build a box out of wood with a door on it
4. can hook up black white and ground wire for a baseboard heater

now this works both ways in the winter i have 2 insulated boxes one for my ales and one for my lagers but lagers are the one i'm posting about if you set the heater up in your box 4 foot heater in a 3wX4lX4h box you should be able to do 4 to 5 lagers at a time set the thermostat to 50 deg and let it ferment now i have a 5wX8lX4h with a 4 foot 1000w base board heater and thermostat i have plenty of lager for the summer months

for those that don't have or cant do these 4 things at the top i guess your SOL and for that i'm sorry this doesn't help