oktoberfest with saflager s-23

hi there,
i brewed an oktoberfest the other day from a recipe from my LHBS. i used the saflager dried yeast. i didn't do a starter but i did rehydrate for about an hour. (i actually rehydrated with a tiny bit (half a tps) of bolied LME and 1 1/2 cups of water) it's been 7 days now fermenting in the fridge at 10C. my gravity started at 1.049 and it's down to 1.018. (this beer is the exact reason why they tell you to not pay attention to your airlock! i don't think i ever saw it move once and trust me it's snug in there and i've checked the lid a hundred times)
anyways..... a couple questions

with the saflager yeast....
-when should i do my D-rest?
-can i lager this lower then 10C when i rack into secondary? and if not could i pitch more yeast come bottling time? or after my D-rest?
i know the package says it's honey spot is 11C-15C but i was hoping for a really clean and clear product. this is my first lager so i'm kinda new but i feel like an amateur pro (lol if that makes sense) with all the information i have read over the last 7 days.
-also do i bottle condition like i would for an ale for the first 3-4 days then move it to cold?

i'm sure this all has been covered but i can't seem to find an answer taylormade for me and my saflager yeast.(btw it doesn't seem to be too popular among those who lager)

Do D-Rest when fermentation is 2/3's complete. After a day or 2 check gravity, the beer should be finished up with the FG, when FG reads constant for 2 days in a row you can drop to lager temperatures slowly.

You should never add malt extract to rehydration liquid.

really? whys that? does it hurt the yeast? thanx for the heads up

rockfish42 said:

You should never add malt extract to rehydration liquid.

Click to expand...

Yes, Please give a reason not to do this .

Palmer just states that your proofing the dry yeast to see if it's still viable should be perfectly fine.

During rehydration the yeast cannot control what passes across their cell membrane for ~15-30 minutes. If you rehydrate with anything but plain sterile tap water this can shock some of the yeast immediately and is the reason you don't rehydrate in wort.
Palmer's recommendation was based on the assumption that the dry yeast was badly stored and required you to check for viability before pitching, This is simply not the case now.
Let me go back and mention that if you were proofing yeast and needed to wait longer to pitch you could add wort to keep the yeast going, but that's past the 1 hour mark.

Palmer specifically mentions not adding sugar until at least 15 minutes into rehydration, and that Lallemand and Danstar don't suggest proofing at all.
http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter6-5.html

ahhh ok so i just rehydrated for the length of my boil give or take a couple mins. so you're saying if i had of added a little LME 15-30 mins in to it it would have been fine but right away is bad. i see. well good to know.
P.S the yeast must have been pretty viable i had heavy fermentation in about 5 hours or so.
thanks everyone for clarifying that for me i appreciate it.

Chis White states in his book that almost 50% of the yeast dies if you just sprinkle the yeast on the wort and do not rehydrate.

How did this brew turn out? I just did an Oktoberfest with S-23.

it turned out great actually. had a nice crispness. was pretty much what i was looking for. a D-rest is greatly encouraged though. the sulfer smell was quite prominent but that cleaned up completely after 3 days at room temp

Mine took 7 days on the D rest to stop a lot of the activity. At the end I lagered for 3 weeks, gave it a try and the flavors hadn't smoothed out. Put it on the keg for another week on CO2 and it really smoothed the flavors out. Still has a slight banana flavor but that was expected from that yeast strain, or so I've heard.

7 days for a D-rest seems long and 3 weeks lagering seems short lol. what temps did you ferment at?
i did my D-rest at roughly SG 1.015 for 3 days at room temp. then lagered at 8C for 7 weeks.
i didn't want to lager too close to zero because of what i had heard about saflager-23 and it's dislike for extreme cold. although i still pitched another packet come bottling time so i guess i could have taken it down colder.

patrick you should try lagering in the keg if you can for a month or so and get back to me.

I've only done one lager before this, but I heard you want to let most of the activity stop before pushing the brew into a secondary container. Plus my house was cold this time of year so I figured that was a big issue in doing a D rest that long so I wasn't worried. I lagered at 38F for three weeks and got anxious so I kegged it. I'm leaving town for a few weeks so it's just going to sit in the keg for a while. Hopefully it starts to smooth out.

cheers! hopefully it turns out great. let me know!