The original Lager thread.. Everything you ever wanted to know or ask

Per BJCP guidelines

Comments: Sometimes brewed as a lager (if so, generally will not exhibit a diacetyl character). When served too cold, the roasted character and bitterness may seem more elevated.

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Now I just have to decide whether to let the starter keep going, or just throw it out, use the dry yeast, and get my S-04 starter going for the Bitter I'll be brewing concurrently.

I may have missed this along the way but what are people's thoughts on reusing a yeast cake for lagers. I have a Munich Dunkel that has been in the primary for about 2 weeks and I am getting ready to drop it into a keg. It was fermented for 1.5 weeks at 50F then warmed up to 65 for a couple of days and it has since sat at ~55F while i figured out what i would do with it. I was planning on making another Dunkel (trying out a couple of different recipes) today and was thinking I could just dump this new batch on the old yeast. I do this all the time with ales but have never done so with a lager.

orford said:

thinking I could just dump this new batch on the old yeast. I do this all the time with ales but have never done so with a lager.

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Pitching directly onto a yeast cake is typically a massive over-pitch and almost never a good idea:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/why-not-pitch-your-yeast-cake-166221/

An exception might be if you brewed a pale, low gravity lager and used the resultant yeast cake for a very high gravity doppelbock, which would require an enormous cell count.

Fair enough, 350 ml or so of slurry it is! Nice thing is I have two beers I want to brew this weekend and both use the same strain. Now have a couple sanitized mason jars full of slurry.

update, my starter lagged for 48 HOURS! I was hoping it'd be soon done and I'd be able to start one for my bitter.

Would two pack of dry yeast be enough for 4 gallons of Pils (1050ish). I don't think MMalty has a pitch rate calculator for number of dry packs.

orford said:

I may have missed this along the way but what are people's thoughts on reusing a yeast cake for lagers. I have a Munich Dunkel that has been in the primary for about 2 weeks and I am getting ready to drop it into a keg. It was fermented for 1.5 weeks at 50F then warmed up to 65 for a couple of days and it has since sat at ~55F while i figured out what i would do with it. I was planning on making another Dunkel (trying out a couple of different recipes) today and was thinking I could just dump this new batch on the old yeast. I do this all the time with ales but have never done so with a lager.

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Since a dunkel lager (yummy stuff, got one lagering now) is usually around 1.050-ish, a whole cake would be slightly over 2x too many cells. You can either remove 1/2 the cake and dump the new wort on what's left (aerate/oxygenate of course) or harvest about a pint of slurry (about 450ml) and pitch that.

For big lagers, I'd much rather do a smaller lager first and use the cake/slurry for the big boy than to go through the whole process of stepping up to the huge starters needed and burning through a bunch of starter wort.

tennesseean_87 said:

update, my starter lagged for 48 HOURS! I was hoping it'd be soon done and I'd be able to start one for my bitter.

Would two pack of dry yeast be enough for 4 gallons of Pils (1050ish). I don't think MMalty has a pitch rate calculator for number of dry packs.

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That would be enough.

Try this calc- http://www.brewersfriend.com/yeast-pitch-rate-and-starter-calculator/

Dry yeast sachets supposedly contain double the cell count that the vials/smack packs, so 200 billion per dry yeast pack. I do not know how to account for the age of the yeast packet however in terms of lowered cell counts. Given the dry, dormant state of the yeast, I suspect that they are far less sensitive than liquid yeast are as they age.

Thanks all for the input. 400 ml of slurry pitched at 50F. Will do the same for my Pilsner tomorrow...

I've been doing only lagers for my last 5-6 batches and have great success with number 1&2 but the others developed a harsh bitter taste that takes about six months to leave. It starts border line undrinkable and ends really smooth and tasty? I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong? Could it be from under pitching? I know I've been leaving beer in primary for whole duration of lagering as well? Any advise would be nice I'm brewing next week once fresh yeast arrives. I've ordered a stir plate and ill do a proper starter but other than that I'm stumped. I know it ends well but 6 months is a long time. Any advise would be appreciated. Does anybody else have to wait this long? I do give it a rest after primary but maybe too late?

For an example, my primary fermentation is between 7-10 days. Then I rack it to a keg. How long is your primary? Once it's done and do a D-rest if needed, then I would rack to a keg. I wouldn't leave it on the yeast for too long. The right amount of yeast is crucial for fermenting a lager. I do a step up starter too. It's made a difference in my beers. I've been brewing lagers for a few years and only recently have they been where I want them.

I kinda postponed brewing lagers until my conical setup is done because they block up my pipeline.

However, I've read a lot about them, including the Noonan book.

Did the post boil wort taste weirdly bitter ?

Could it be the Braun hefe, or brown yeast? This is supposedly harshly bitter. Some breweries construct a false ceiling on their fermentation vessels to trap and remove this, others use a blowoff device to expel this during fermentation. Just a thought.

TD

I used wyeast Munich but it was washed , I'm guessing from your replies that its my yeast strength, ill do a step starter with fresh yeast and pay more attention to the final gravity for the d rest. I went into some other forums and discovered I may have been storing it to long. Therefore funky by products from low yeast counts. If it turns out i guess it's fresh from now on.thx although still open for advice😀 thx

kingjimbeer said:

Could it be from under pitching? I know I've been leaving beer in primary for whole duration of lagering as well? Any advise would be nice I'm brewing next week once fresh yeast arrives. I've ordered a stir plate and ill do a proper starter but other than that I'm stumped. I know it ends well but 6 months is a long time. Any advise would be appreciated. Does anybody else have to wait this long? I do give it a rest after primary but maybe too late?

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A typical lager shouldn't take anywhere near 6 months to taste right.

Could you give us some more info about how much yeast you pitch, at what temp you pitch and your ferment temp?

The time to increase the temp for a d-rest is when the beer is about 75-80% of the way to expected FG. I like to run it up to 62-64*F and leave it there 5-7 days.

Don't lager in the primary. After fermentation and d-rest are done, cold crash it for 5-7 days, rack to a keg or a carboy/better bottle and do the weeks of lager in that.

I am about to do a d rest on my first lager.
I am at 53f now in my ferm chamber; do I need to step up to 62f or can I just do it in one shot? My chamber is pretty efficient and it could get up to temp in 15 min.
I am also planning on lagering in a keg; can I seal it as normal or do I need an airlock?
Thanks

One shot.

Yup, one shot and seal as normal. Blast a little Co and purge a bit. Now, I drop the temp slowly until I hit 32-35, but a lot of people just cold crash down to lagering temps.

Awesome. Thanks.
I am planning on dropping the temp by 5's until I hit lager temp.

Has anybody tried WL860? I guess it's special Munich Helles Strain. It's only available March and April. I have a starter going for a brew tomorrow.

Never tried that one. Let us know how it performs. Have only had experience with 830wlp. Once I get my lagering system up and running (modified from www.plasticconical.com), I plan to use Saflager dry for all my lagers until I get some more experience with lagers under my belt.

TD


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Just finished off a Helles last night. The last 3 - 4 pints were glorious, and made me realize that I should have lagered the keg longer before drinking so much of it.

Darwin18 said:

Just finished off a Helles last night. The last 3 - 4 pints were glorious, and made me realize that I should have lagered the keg longer before drinking so much of it.

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That's great to hear. How long did you lager it for?

I only really lagered it for about 5 weeks while I was carbonating it in the keg. I started drinking it shortly thereafter. Last night it had been in the keg/lagering for probably close to three months. The early samples that I drank had a corn-like finish (not DMS or diacetyl) that really smoothed out and almost completely disappeared from the last few pints last night.

Bulls Beers said:

Has anybody tried WL860? I guess it's special Munich Helles Strain. It's only available March and April. I have a starter going for a brew tomorrow.

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I haven't, but that sounds pretty good. I'm usually a Wyeast guy, but I should branch out and try some more White Labs. I know that I do like WLP833 though.

Here's a question for the lager experts.

I brewed an Oktoberfest last weekend, everything went well. It's doing d-rest currently. The original plan was to transfer it into a keg in another day or two, put it in a corner out of the way and in july chill and start lagering for 3 months. However I have a finite number of kegs and wasn't paying attention when I did my brew scheduling. And, I can't justify $80-$100 for a used keg. I might not have an empty keg for a few months.

So, question is, should I transfer to a different carboy to get it off the yeast cake, or just leave it on the yeast cake until I have keg available?

If you want to keep it sitting around until July, I'd want to transfer it off the yeast into a new carboy.


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FatsSchindee said:

If you want to keep it sitting around until July, I'd want to transfer it off the yeast into a new carboy.


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That is what I was thinking, but from reading around here it seems like people discourage transferring to secondary, so I thought I would ask.

Thanks

02fx4dude said:

That is what I was thinking, but from reading around here it seems like people discourage transferring to secondary, so I thought I would ask.

Thanks

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What folks (like me) discourage is the pointless/needless siphoning of a beer to a secondary. In your situation, long-term aging or lagering is a perfectly good reason to move the beer over to a carboy.

BigFloyd said:

What folks (like me) discourage is the pointless/needless siphoning of a beer to a secondary. In your situation, long-term aging or lagering is a perfectly good reason to move the beer over to a carboy.

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Put into that context I can see the logic.

Thanks

Ok Augustiner, You win, I give up. No matter how many times I try, I can't get it right. I mean, WTF, it's only 4 ingredients right??? My Oktoberfest is excellent. My dark lager is great, but the beer that is most important, I can't get this fukcin right. Don't get me wrong, it's good. Some of my friends really like it. I've tweaked it and tweaked it over the years, but for me it's not the same. Now I'm thinking on changing the hops. Right now I'm using Mittelfruh, which I know is right. Who the hell knows. I've had Augustiner in Munich and I've consumed many bottles here. I like to have some in the fridge to compare. Ok. Rant is over. Thank you!!! BTW, I'm drinking an Augustiner right now. fu ckers!!!!