any tips for lagering at 32-34 degrees??

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Beernewb

Beernewb

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my bier de garde from northern is going to be lagered starting later this week, how do keep this from freezing? i have a johnson controls regulator, but it sways 2 degrees or so even when I set it to 1 degree. i'm a little nervous that lagering for such a long time at that low a tmp is going to ruin the beer and/or freeze the water in the airlock.

also, how fast do i drop the temps?

thanks in advance for any help. sorry for all the questions, the instructions are rather vague--my book "Brewing Lager beer" is on its way.
 
You can drop the temps a few degrees a day. I'd set the temp controller at 38 or so. The alcohol (especially in a biere de garde) means the beer won't freeze at 32. You don't need to lager at the brink of freezing anyway. Just get it below 40 and it'll get the job done.
 
I've understood that 34F is the optimal temperature for lagering. You can set your controller at 35 and be quite safe. Even if the water in your freezer dips below freezing for a little while, water does not freeze instantaneously. If it really makes you crazy, set the thermostat at 36.

You certainly will not ruin your beer at such temperatures.


TL
 
I have a Johnson Controller and chest freezer and here's what I do:

-I fix the probe of the temperature controller to the side of my Better Bottle with several layers of bubble wrap and tape. This makes the controller sense the temperature of the beer, not the ambient air in the fridge. I also insert a probe thermometer into this bubble wrap to get an accurate reading of the beer temp.

-I set the Johnson controller to about 2 degrees colder than what I want the beer to be. This is because the controller has a 4 degree temperature swing. So, if the controller is set at 32, this means it will turn the freezer on at 36 and turn it back off at 32. So the mean temperature will be 34.

That seems to work well for me and my probe thermometer ends up corresponding with my controller in the way I intended.

EDIT: For the airlock, you can put cheap vodka in it to prevent it from freezing.
 
Menschmaschine you say this works for you but in my mind I'm having trouble grasping it. If the probe is set to sense the temperature of the beer rather than the ambient wouldn't this result in huge temperature swings?

Think about it - it takes the beer much more time to change temperatures than the ambient so once the probe senses that it needs to cool things down say 2 degrees, it kicks the freezer on. Problem is that the freezer would be running until the beer itself is cooled 2 degrees. Meanwhile the ambient is a few degrees cooler still because the ambient cools faster than the beer so the beer will continue to cool even though the freezer has kicked off. Once it hits bottom it will start to warm back up and the whole cycle starts all over again.

I've never lagered before so I'm just speculating here so forgive me if I'm way off base but it was seem that you would get a lot less temperature variations if the probe was in the ambient instead of the beer.
 
MN_Jay, I see what you're saying. I have a science background, but thermodynamics is not my strong point (hence my C in Physics 1). I know that if you're trying to keep a certain primary fermentation temperature, it's best to have the probe read the beer temp, not ambient because the fermentation is producing heat and if your controller is controlling by ambient temperature, the beer will heat up more than ambient due to fermentation heat. For lagering, I guess I just assumed having the probe read beer temp was better.

You could have a point there, but either way I don't think it's a big deal. We're talking lagering at 36 vs 32... probably not much of a noticable difference. Any physicists care to pipe in?... maybe the center of the fermenter warms up while the circumference stays cold and heat always move towards cold?? Something like that?

By the way... love your avatar... stickin' it to the man!
 
MN_Jay said:
Menschmaschine you say this works for you but in my mind I'm having trouble grasping it. If the probe is set to sense the temperature of the beer rather than the ambient wouldn't this result in huge temperature swings?

Think about it - it takes the beer much more time to change temperatures than the ambient so once the probe senses that it needs to cool things down say 2 degrees, it kicks the freezer on. Problem is that the freezer would be running until the beer itself is cooled 2 degrees. Meanwhile the ambient is a few degrees cooler still because the ambient cools faster than the beer so the beer will continue to cool even though the freezer has kicked off. Once it hits bottom it will start to warm back up and the whole cycle starts all over again.

I've never lagered before so I'm just speculating here so forgive me if I'm way off base but it was seem that you would get a lot less temperature variations if the probe was in the ambient instead of the beer.
Click to expand...

I've often wondered the same thing. I don't care so much about the ambient temperature swings as the beer swings. As the beer cools slowly, the ambient temperature drops quickly. By the time my beer gets down where I want it, the ambient temperature could be far below my target beer temperature and cause my beer to coool further than I want.

Of course, whatever works for you works, so go with it. I've found where I want to set my controller during fermentation and how to adjust it as fermentation slows. When it comes to a situation where the beer temperature should virtually equal the ambient, such as during lagering, it should make no difference whether you measure beer temperature or ambient.


TL
 

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