Are all Octoberfests Lagers?

Want to brew one soon let it sit til October, but I dont have equipment capacity to lager. All the recipes I'm seeing are lagers. Am I just searching recipes poorly or is this style lager, period?

Why not use a good Octoberfest recipe, a clean Ale yeast, ferment at the low end of the range (62 deg in a swamp cooler set up), then transfer to secondary and set it in the fridge until September, then bottle?

Here you go...

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f63/bee-cave-brewery-oktoberfest-ale-38880/


I've done something similar with WY2565 at around 60 degrees with great results.

A true Oktoberfest is a lager. However as the others said, you can simply swap out the lager yeast for an ale yeast. Pick an ale yeast that ferments very clean without a lot of esters, and ferment on the cool side.

This is great help. Just to enhance my climb up the learning curve, how does one "pick out out a clean ale yeast" that doesn't produce lots of esters? Like, what resource do folks use when choosing yeast? Thanks!

MDB said:

This is great help. Just to enhance my climb up the learning curve, how does one "pick out out a clean ale yeast" that doesn't produce lots of esters? Like, what resource do folks use when choosing yeast? Thanks!

Click to expand...

The yeast manufacturer websites are really good, but we also have a lot of knowledge and can help.

In my experience, for dry yeast, nottingham ale yeast at 60-62 degrees is ultra clean. For liquid yeast, pacman yeast at 60-62 degrees is also great.

If you have to ferment a bit warmer, you could get by with WLP001.

I know that many brewers have had good luck with 'cream ale yeast blend" (white labs) but I have never tried it.

MDB said:

This is great help. Just to enhance my climb up the learning curve, how does one "pick out out a clean ale yeast" that doesn't produce lots of esters? Like, what resource do folks use when choosing yeast? Thanks!

Click to expand...

S-05 is good. The Wyeast 2565 (posted above) is a great yeast also.

You're looking at the best brewing resource available.

I've also been reading about wlp 060. Apparently it is a blend which contains some lager yeast, and gives a bit of that finish while fermenting at ale temps. Has anyone had experience with this yeast?

http://www.whitelabs.com/beer/strains_wlp060.html