lagers and bottle conditioning
When bottle conditioning lager beer, there are 2 options for the brewer:
- bottle the beer after the primary fermentation and maturation is complete and lager the beer in the bottle
- bottle the beer after the lagering is complete
Both have their pros and cons
bottle conditioning before lagering
When you bottle condition before lagering, you wait until the beer has completed fermentation and prime the beer with corn sugar or DME. Since the yeast is still fairly healthy and active there shouldn't be any problems in getting the beer carbonated.
Let the beer caronate at room temperature for a week. Give it a taste to ensure complete carbonation before moving it to cold storage 32 - 42 *F (0 - 5 *C) to lager it.
Because the beer is bottled before lagering, all the yeast and other sediment that settles out during lagering will remain in the bottle.
bottle conditioning after lagering
If you plan to bottle after lagering, as suggested in Noonan's Book "New Brewing Lager Beer", you lager the beer in a carboy first. This may take 4 weeks to a few months depending on the beer.
Because the yeast has been inactive for such a long time and only little yeast is in suspension anyway, it is recommended to add fresh yeast at bottling time to ensure consistent carbonation in a reasonable time frame. The fresh yeast can come from either dry yeast (1/4 pack should be enough), yeast sediment from the primary fermenter of another batch or Kraeusen. The type of yeast doesn't matter much since the flavor has already been defined during the fermentation and lagering process. Any clean well flocculating ale or lager yeast will do.
When racking from the lagering vessel to the bottling bucket make sure that as little sediment as possible is transferred since the advantage of this method is to leave all this behind and have the beer benefit from bulk-aging.
