Questions about bottling a lager

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dgez

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I will be bottling my fist lager in a couple of weeks and have a couple of questions. The lager is a basic czech pilsner. The lagering phase will be 6weeks long at 38ish degrees. My questions...

Do I need to get the beer to room temp, like an ale, to bottle?
Do I condition the beer at room temp, or in the fridge? If in the fridge, what temp?
Do I need to add more yeast? if so, how much more?

Thanks.
 
yes, to carbonate, the beer must rest at room temp for 7-21 days.
once carbonation has finished at room temp, then lager down to your temp.
you do not need to add more yeast.
 
Temperature at bottling doesn't really matter as long as you account for it in your sugar addition calculation. This is a questionable topic though because the real question is how much CO2 is dissolved in the beer, not at what temperature is it. And although the two usually correspond, lagers go through various temperature changes by the time they get to bottling. So, which temperature is reflective of the CO2 dissolved in the beer? Perhaps bottle it as cold a you can (~40°F) and use maybe 50°F for your priming calculator.

If you're using corn sugar (dextrose), you can bottle condition at room temp. If you're using a malt-based sugar (DME, saved wort, etc.), it's best to carbonate at primary fermentation temps.

You shouldn't need to add more yeast with a 6 week lagering time. I lager most of mine for 6 weeks and I just suck up a little of the yeast from the secondary to make sure there's enough to carbonate. They carb up fine.
 
i suppose i should just let mensch answer all of the lager questions. i answer, then he answers with all of his damn science stuff and i feel all unscientific and stuff :(
 
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