When to move Lager from primary to secondary

Hello all,
I normally do only Ales but I have the perfect garage for lagering. It is a constant 54 degrees. So I made a Hellesbock with lager yeast. It has been going well for about 10 days. I still have very active ferementation. I have about an inch or so of sludge in the bottom. When is a good time to move this? With an ale I would move it already. I just don't want any off flavors because this looks to be a good one.

Tom

inho, never. Leave that baby in Primary for a long time. Secondary isnt necessarily needed for beer. Unless you plan to add Oak Cubes or a secondary flavor like fruits and such. Just mho. Good luck and happy brewing

FireNightFly said:

inho, never. Leave that baby in Primary for a long time. Secondary isnt necessarily needed for beer. Unless you plan to add Oak Cubes or a secondary flavor like fruits and such. Just mho. Good luck and happy brewing

Click to expand...

Speaking of OAK. I just put my Arrognat Bastard clone into my OAK barrel. I can't wait to taste that one!

If your fermentation is close to being done (Hydro reading), you should do a D rest until complete fermentation (Hydro). Since it's a lager I would rack to kegs if you have them or a secondary and do your bulk lagering without the trub.

The accepted science is that leaving a lager on primary sediment for too long has the potential to produce some noticeable off-flavors resulting from compounds produced by decaying yeast cells (not autolysis, per se). The reason this is so important for most lagers is because most lagers are meant to be as clean as possible, so the taste threshold for off-flavors is much lower than for ales.

I get my lagers off primary yeast soon after primary fermentation is finished. This has always ended up being the 2-week mark, which includes a D-rest (I do them regardless) and lowering the temp. back down 5°F per day to at least primary fermentation temps. (~50°F). For bigger lagers, I could see how this could go to 3 weeks. So, 2 or 3 weeks in primary is no big deal. I'd start to get uncomfortable towards 4 weeks, depending on OG and other factors, but others have reported longer without ill-effects.

http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=Fermenting_Lagers

I think a secondary is a very good for lagers and I use them regularly for ales too.

This figure give some guidance for transferring.

Awesome thank you all, however this has raised another question. What is a D rest? as I said I normally do Ales and this is my first lager attempt other than a dunkel I do often.

FireNightFly said:

inho, never. Leave that baby in Primary for a long time. Secondary isnt necessarily needed for beer. Unless you plan to add Oak Cubes or a secondary flavor like fruits and such. Just mho. Good luck and happy brewing

Click to expand...

As the others mentioned, many of us always do a secondary for lagering. Lagering for weeks on a yeast cake is a bad idea, in my opinion.

A diacetyl rest is simply allowing the yeast enough time to "clean up" any diacetyl they may have produced. Some lager yeast are notorious diacetyl producers. Diacetyl, in a larger quantity, tastes quite a bit like butter or butterscotch. In a smaller quantity, it has more of a slickness or oily mouthfeel.

A good way to do this rest is to wait until fermentation is about 75% finished. Then, raise the temperature of the lager to about 10 degrees warmer than the fermentation temperature. This will allow the still-active yeast to work harder reducing the diacetyl. After 48 hours, you can rack the beer off of the yeast cake and then begin the lagering procedure.

You don't always need a diacetyl rest, especially if you pitch a large starter cold. It's never a bad idea to do one, though. Ideally, you'd do it while the yeast is still active but it's sometimes hard to catch it at the perfect time, so you can do it at the tail end of fermentation without worry.

Ah thanks Yuri for correcting my errors. Im glad you said something there, I have a Black Lager in right now.