Lager Fermentation Behavior

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Spartan1979

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It's probably been 10 years since I brewed a lager. I'm pretty sure I used to ferment them at 54°, but I was monitoring the air temp in the fridge, so it was probably closer to 57°.

Anyhow, I brewed an Oktoberfest Friday with 2206. I'm fermenting it at 50° with the probe for the temperature controller in a thermowell in the fermenter. There is very little foam on the top of the beer. It doesn't even cover the whole surface. But there are bubbles coming out of the blowoff tube every couple of seconds, so it seems to be fermenting okay.

I just don't remember a beer fermenting with so little foam. Can anybody reassure me?
 
Lagers are "bottom fermenting", although I've seen krausen with some of my lagers. If it's fermenting, it's fine!

I've always had Krausen before, but as I said, I'm probably fermenting 7° cooler than ever before, so I could see the activity being less vigorous and producing less krausen. It's just a bit out what I'm used to.
 
I'm a rookie but the last four pale lagers I brewed all had very little foam on top and slow taking off. I have the primary air temp at 50 degrees and pitched the yeast at 55 degrees directly before fermenting with lots of O2. They all took between 24 and 48 hours to really get going. For what its worth I think your fine.
 
I took a gravity reading (using a refractometer and a formula) and the beer was around 1.039. Wednesday morning there was a nice krausen over the whole thing. I guess it was just slow getting going. I must have underpitched, even though I did a starter using a stir plate and very fresh yeast.
 

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