California Common lagering vs. conditioning

Happy 4th of July!

I just racked my first California Common to the keg after 29 days in primary. I'm concerned about my lack of temperature control- from 59 to 72 degrees during that time. I tried the fantastic water fermentation cooler by jcarson33 and learned I'm no thermodynamicist (make sure the volume of cooling water around your carboy is less than the carboy itself). I ended up with a big Rubbermade full of water and swapping coldpacks twice a day. Tough to do when I got stuck at work, etc. I tasted my FG sample and there's some rough spots.

The result of this extract brew:
OG= 1.051
FG= 1.010
AABV= 5.38%
Attenuation= 80% (thanks to Death Brewer's calculator)

So here's the question: do I let the CC lager in the kegerator for 6-8 weeks with just the CO2 I used to purge the keg, or do I carb it at serving pressure (11psi) the whole time and start tasting in month?

This place is awesome and I've learned aton searching this place. Thanks everyone

No replies?

Well I kegged it on the 4th, purged it with CO2 and am letting it age in the kegerator at 38* off the gas unless someone here has any other thoughts.

Oh that is a great idea! Yes, get the o2 out of the keg and keep it at 38degrees for a few weeks, it looks like about 5 weeks. That will take off a lot of the rough spots but as long as initial fermentation (the first 3 days) was kept below about 65, the roughness should go away. Just keep it cold and do a long condition and keep the co2 off of it except for the o2 purge.

Yep, should work fine. I'd start sampling about two weeks in.

For what reason would one not want to force carbonate during lagering? I nearly always do.

944play said:

For what reason would one not want to force carbonate during lagering? I nearly always do.

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I don't really think it makes any difference. One thing is if you leave it flat during cold conditioning/lagering you wont be tempted to drink it. And carbing it will drop the pH as the amount of dissolved CO2 increases so theoretically the rate and type of reactions could be different in a carbed vs non-carbed keg, but I've done it both ways and both are fine so I usually just put it on the gas so when I'm ready to drink it it is already carbed.

Thanks for the feedback gents, I appreciate it. I'm going to let it go off-gas for 4 weeks then hook it up for a week and see what I get.

944play- For what reason would someone want to force carbonate if they're planning on letting it sit for a few weeks? There should be sufficeint time to saturate over time at serving pressure (11psi) right? I was asking if there is a benefit to letting it lager off-gas or at serving pressure.

As far as keepin my mits off of it, I killed the IPA so I had to go out and get a keg of Racer 5 to tide me over. I'll get through some how.

I don't filter. If I did, that would be a compelling reason to lager without carbonating.

The obvious advantage to force carbing while lagering is that it's carbonated when lagering is done. The slightly non-obvious advantage is that you have positive CO2 pressure within the keg keeping O2 and bugs out.

Thanks 944. I don't filter either, just don't see the need yet. In an effort to minimize O2 and bugs, I did prep the keg. I usually put a gallon of Iostar solution in the keg, slosh it around, hook it up and push it out the tap with CO2. Then I store them in the kegerator until I need one. Did the same thing this time and racked the CC into the keg with the hope that the CO2 would sit in the keg and be displaced by the beer. Then I hooked it up to gas, let it pressurize and purged it a couple times. That should be solid on sanitization and preventing any oxidation right?

Pretty good. I go one further in the oxidation paranoia - I fill the keg with sanitizer and push it out with CO2, so I'm racking into as close to zero oxygen as I can get.