Question about pale lager batch

Hi all

I'm new to this forum, but needed some advice about a recent batch of pale lager. I have been brewing for a while and had made some good lagers in the past, but hadn't made a lager for a long time because I no longer had the fridge space - got another fridge and decided to make a pale lager.

It was pretty active in the primary at about 62 degrees for a day, then I slowly lowered about 5 degrees a day until about 37 degrees, where it stayed for 2 weeks, then performed a diacetyl rest at about 62 degrees for a day, then into the secondary for about a month, again lowering 5 degrees a day until back to 37. Everything was looking good so far.

I primed and bottled, and here is where I may have messed up (I made the mistake of working from memory) - in my mind, I thought previously that I had continued lagering in the bottle, but now I'm questioning that - to further complicate it, I set the temp to about 45 degrees to store in the bottle, but somebody unknowingly turned it down to 35 degrees - after 3 weeks, I cracked one open and it is very flat w/ very little carbonation - now I'm not sure what I should do next:

Do you think I have messed up this batch or will it likely start carbonating when I raise the storage temp? Should I move to storing at room temp or just a slightly warmer temp? If it doesn't start carbonating on it's own, could I possibly re-pitch & re-prime each bottle & then re-cap? - never done this before, but I really don't want to lose this crystal-clear, nicely-flavored batch.

Thanks in advance for your advice.

LJ

Typically, you bottle carbonate lagers at about the same temps as ales. Since you are only fermenting a very small amount of new sugar in the bottles, you won't get any off flavors from the higher temps. Set the fridge to 60-65F and give it 3-4 weeks. You should have good carbonation by then.

Lagers ferment at 50 degrees, more or less. If you lowered the fermentation temperature to 37 degrees for two weeks, you probably didn't ferment the lager. (That's more of a "lagering" or storage temperature). Lagers will typically be fermented at 50 degrees for 10-14 days, then the temperature is raised for the diacetyl rest before racking and lagering.

If you took any gravity readings, that would help us tell you the next step.

If you didn't, all I can say is BOOM! meaning that you've got bottle bombs on your hands if you didn't take gravity readings and reach a stable gravity before bottling.