Frozen lager

So....I was lagering my vienna. All seemed to be going fine for the first 6 weeks. My plan was to lager it for 8 weeks. I went out of town last week for work and came home this morning to find my lager was a 5 gallon popsicle. I know why it froze, the 60 watt light bulb couldn't keep up with 15 below. My question is should I add fresh yeast at bottling and is there anything else I should be worried about. The yeast is wyeast 2308.
Thanks
Kyle

wyo220 said:

So....I was lagering my vienna. All seemed to be going fine for the first 6 weeks. My plan was to lager it for 8 weeks. I went out of town last week for work and came home this morning to find my lager was a 5 gallon popsicle. I know why it froze, the 60 watt light bulb couldn't keep up with 15 below. My question is should I add fresh yeast at bottling and is there anything else I should be worried about. The yeast is wyeast 2308.
Thanks
Kyle

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If your carboy doesn't break, that will be a victory right there.

When you go to bottle, you can boil up your priming sugar, cool it and add 1/3 package of dry yeast. Nottingham is a good one- it's very neutral and flocculant, so is S04. Stir it well, and then rack the beer into the yeast/ priming solution. That should work out fine.

Its warming slowly right now, fingers crossed it dosen't break. Thanks for the yeast advice, I have some us-05, do you think it would be all right to carb with?
Thanks again
Kyle

wyo220 said:

Its warming slowly right now, fingers crossed it dosen't break. Thanks for the yeast advice, I have some us-05, do you think it would be all right to carb with?
Thanks again
Kyle

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So5 isn't as flocculant, and doesn't clear the beer as well. I'd be concerned about working so hard to get a clear lager and then having it not be crystal clear because of the yeast. However, if that's all you have that would be fine.

John Palmer's How to Brew book has something about that situation http://howtobrew.com/section1/chapter10-6.html which pretty much says what Yooper just said: it'll be fine & just probably want to add some fresh yeast.

Curious about the situation, are you lagering in glass or plastic? I've been considering the outside in a storage shed near a water heater/furnace. Been trying to measure temperature out there and not quite sure if my thermometer is broken or if it's really 43 in there when it's 20F outside.

Thanks again for the info. I am using a temp controller on my frige outside in the shop. I works great as long as the outside temp is above the controller setting. When the temp drops too low I have redneck engineered a heater out of two paint pans and a 60 watt bulb. In my situtation it works great down to about 0. Below that the heater can't keep up.
Kyle