Making Good Lager in Less Time!

Have you ever wanted to try making good lager beer, but resisted because of the time investment? While some folks refuse to break from tradition, many of us homebrewers have been using a method involving very precise temp control to produce fantastic quality lager beers in 3-4 weeks. It's detailed best on my blog, I'm curious what you all think!

Very interesting, I may have to give this a try. What temp do you keep your keezer at?

I'm new to brewing lagers but I've been doing them pretty similar to you. I've been fermenting at 50 for a week and 60 for a week, cold crash couple days then into the keg to carb up. Seems like after a week or two they clear right up and taste great. In fact I have a 6 week old Pils on tap that tasted better at 2 weeks than it does now.

I'm definitely going to try this, but you have a math error in your directions (or a bad description):

On the morning of the 5th day (beer should be over 50% attenuated), remove probe from side of fermenter so it measures ambient temp inside chamber and bump regulator up 3F; continue raising ambient temp 3F every 12 hours or so until you reach 65F then leave it for 2-3 days to finish fermenting and cleaning up. (+2 days = 7 days)

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Your ramp up from 50F or so to 65F is going to take about two days based on your schedule of +3F every 12 hours, then you say to leave it for another 2 to 3 days. So, at the end of that section you would have +4 days = 9 days rather than +2 days = 7 days.

Right?

Interesting read. I'd like to experiment with this on my next lager.

consider me a skeptic. when i do the accelerated maturation method i'm still much happier with my lagers after the ol' 1 week lagering for every 2 degrees plato. they aren't bad before, but they aren't the same.

BUT -- i think 4 week is pretty standard lager turnaround in the industry, is it not?

I like the outside the box thinking. 20 years ago I was doing very similar testing with lagers. I didn’t have my timing down like you have adjusting temps every 12 hrs but very similar processes.

I would do the first 4 days at lager temps that were recommended by the yeast I was using. Then rack it off and add some ale yeast to clean up anything missed by the Lager yeast to hit FG numbers bringing the temp up into the mid 60’s for a week. Cold crash after that in the fridge at 35 degrees for another week. Then keg and carbonate with great results.

Didn't get to read the total blog yet. Do you tell what yeast you used and at what temps?

Putting a system together now and will def try out your methods. Keep up the open minded brewing.

Thanks for posting and the write up!

Your strategy works in my mind. Initial pitching temp is critical, raised to diacetyl rest temps, then goes back down keeping yeast active... Also, I really like you admit there could be change over time but I agree it is minute.

I was gonna try something very similar but I might just try yours instead. I am GASP! not doing a decoction and GASP! not using a website to calculate my starter either!

My pleasure! I'm glad you enjoyed it. Cheers!


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I have made Cream of three Crops, an American Premiun Lager, a Belgain Wit and Maibock... Father is coming to Colorado in the middle of April and is a huge BMC drinker. I have a Pilsner that I make that he does kind of enjoy. When I last spoke with him he was kind of crying at my why I didn't do a Pilsner. So have at it I went ahead and brewed it and will be giving your technique a try to see if I can actually pull this off in a quick manner.

I've never brewed a lager before but have wanted to try it out. With decoction mashes and everything else involved it looked a little too complex for me to do. I think that I will try this very soon!

I went to Lazy Monk Brewery the other day and they have fantastic lagers. He does a 10 day step fermentation starting out at 50 and raises the temp 1 degree every day for 10 days then cold crashes for a day or two, transfers to bright tanks to carb for a week or so then packages. Doesn't sound like he lagers very long at all and the beers look and taste great.

That sounds like an interesting method, I may have to play with it soon


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airdog_47 said:

I have made Cream of three Crops, an American Premiun Lager, a Belgain Wit and Maibock... Father is coming to Colorado in the middle of April and is a huge BMC drinker. I have a Pilsner that I make that he does kind of enjoy. When I last spoke with him he was kind of crying at my why I didn't do a Pilsner. So have at it I went ahead and brewed it and will be giving your technique a try to see if I can actually pull this off in a quick manner.

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Did you lager the cream of three crops? I'm thinking about doing that one for my first lager.


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I "lager" every beer, in essence, while it's sitting in a keg in the keezer carbing up.


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I use a similar method, kind of an accelerated fermentation schedule. I start out at or just below 50F for 5 days or until I see fermentation kind of slowing a tad, then raise the temp 5 degrees a day until it's up to room temp. Works great and the beers go into the keg clean. They take about the normal length of time to clear for me, which is 3-4 weeks. Obviously, the longer it's cold, the clearer it'll get. My kegerator is set so the beer is at 40F, so it takes slightly longer than those who lager closer to 32F. But I don't have a dedicated lagering freezer, so I gotta make do.

For me, the bane of brewing lagers is getting the wort down to below my intended fermentation temperature after the boil. I bought a pump to recirculate ice water for this summer, so that should help. This winter, my tap water was in the mid 40's, so I was able to chill to 48 pretty easily. I loved that. Hated the cold ass weather though.

beersk said:

For me, the bane of brewing lagers is getting the wort down to below my intended fermentation temperature after the boil. I bought a pump to recirculate ice water for this summer, so that should help.

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I brew hybrid and lager beers all year long, even during the summer when my groundwater is ~72˚F. I just chill until the wort 6-8˚F above groundwater temp, rack to carboys, cover the tops with foil, then throw them in my cold fermentation freezer until they reach pitching temp. I'm usually pitching the next morning. As long as you're sanitary, this works really well.

The pre-chillers can definitely help get your wort cooler than groundwater, but very inefficiently-- lots of water use for little payback. Plus you've got to use pumps and hoses, which I try to avoid at all costs

I seem to remember Tasty saying that he more or less does this with his lagers. He might even turn them around a little faster. So long as you've reached terminal gravity, any reason you couldn't just drop it straight down to 32f after the diacetyl rest instead of ramping it down over time?

pegasus_brew said:

I seem to remember Tasty saying that he more or less does this with his lagers. He might even turn them around a little faster. So long as you've reached terminal gravity, any reason you couldn't just drop it straight down to 32f after the diacetyl rest instead of ramping it down over time?

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No problems crashing it right down if you do a d-rest. I think most brewers slowly chill the beer down to freezing because they don't do a d-rest and want the yeast to clean up the beer more. It shouldn't matter if you do a thorough d-rest.

Brulosopher, I tried to avoid pumps for a long time too, but it's nice to be able to get the yeast pitching out of the way on brew day. I need to get a GFCI outlet then I'm good to go to use the pump.

I just brewed my first lager and plan on using this fermentation schedule. I brewed a bohemian pilsner and I can't wait to see how it turns out!


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Well I just tried a sample of my Bo pils and it's great! I'm in schedule to keg on Wednesday morning. Thanks to brulosopher for giving us the tools for making a great beer!

How necessary is it to "remove probe from side of fermentor so it measures ambient temp inside chamber"????

I ask because I've been using a friend's garage refrigerator for fermenting lagers, controlled with an STC-1000 with custom firmware and might not get a chance to get to her refrigerator on day 5 in order to remove the probe.

FWIW, the ramping steps for that custom firmware to achieve your schedule are:
SP0 50, dH0 120
SP1 50, dH1 48
SP2 65, dH2 72
SP3 65, dH3 84
SP4 30, dH4 0

I'd love to drop off a carboy/bucket and mason jar of yeast, run a profile to ramp the wort to pitching temp, pitch the yeast, change the STC-1000 to the above lagering profile, and be able to ignore it until it has been cold crashing for a few days and I can get to it with a clean keg.

Thanks.

MikeInMKE said:

How necessary is it to "remove probe from side of fermentor so it measures ambient temp inside chamber"????

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from the comments section

This is a question I’ve actually gotten a few times, a good one, indeed. My thinking in having the probe measure ambient is that it wouldn’t take as long for ambient to get to the target temp, meaning the beer would actually cool more slowly than if the probe was attached to the fermenter. I hope that makes some sense. Basically, with the probe attached to the fermenter, the freezer would continuously run until the beer was the target temp, which takes considerably longer. Anyway, I’ve actually done it both ways with no ill effect, I just prefer the ambient approach. Cheers!

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This is a pretty good example of a, modern lager fermentation schedule.


BUT there's a couple slight differences between commercial accelerated lager fermentations and home brew fermentations:

• Diacetyl- Breweries who do accelerated lager fermentations most certainly monitor diacetyl precursors (vicenal diaketones VDK) very carefully so that they KNOW when the diacetyl precursors are gone. Home brewers should perform a "VDK force test" to ensure that diacetyl has actually been reduced because it is not possible to taste the diacetyl precursors (VDK). -Heat up a small sample of beer for 10 minutes, chill it back down to drinking temperature and THEN taste for diacetyl. The precursors will form actual diacetyl that you can taste faster at higher temperatures and in the presence of oxygen.
• Diacetyl- Commercial breweries who perform accelerated lager fermentations often use an enzyme that prevents the formation of diacetyl entirely. Commercial breweries are always using the same lager strain and know its behavior well; home brewers dont' always have the luxury and there ARE strains that simply take up diacetyl far slower than others. Pitching enough healthy yeast, and pitching at lower temperatures will help, but the added insurance of diacetyl-converting enzymes might not be a bad thing.
  
  The enzyme is called alpha acetolactate-decarboxylase (ALDC) and it converts the diacetyl pre-cursor alpha acetolactate directly to acetoin, which is what yeast end up converting diacetyl into; this skips diacetyl entirely and avoids the issue. The big brewery commercial products are called Maturex (from Novozymes) and "SEBmature L" from Specialty Enzymes, but I HAVE seen this enzyme available in home brew sizes somewhere called something else... Just can't find it right now...
  
• Clarification- Almost all production lager facilities filter their lager, especially when on these accelerated schedules. Filtration can be a good way to get a lager that tastes mature and looks nice and clear on a faster schedule. Adding finings helps, too and TRULY "crash cooling" rapidly and to very low temps can help too. (Buy 4 lbs of dry ice and wrap it in a towel around your corney keg while your lagering fridge is set on the coldest setting; you want to get it to -1 as quick as possible to help shock the yeast into rapid flocculation.)

-Great post and thread, by-the-way.

Edit- The enzyme available to home brewers is called "BioMat DAR" and is available from MidWest.

Adam

sounds like a good idea, i'll have to give it try for my next lager in a few weeks time!

It's not quite ready but I've never been known for my patience! It's still tastes great!

I had it on 48 hours at 30psi now I've got it set at 20 psi and will bring it down to 15 tonight. I'll let it set for a week and enjoy.




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Here is another lager made using this quick lager method. This one is a month old now. Tastes great!

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That looks delicious, royal1911!

Brulosopher said:

That looks delicious, royal1911!

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Thanks for the inspiration!