Lager: Post fermentation treatment

[GrundleCruncher]

At what point in the fermentation of a lager should the diacetyl rest take place, at the end of fermentation in the primary or when I rack to secondary?

What should I do after the diacetyl rest, slowly bring it down to 37deg f or hold it at 50ish for a while before the low temp conditioning?

And can I do low temp conditioning in my keg?

A lot of questions I know, but I'm kinda confused. Thanks for your help.

 

[Iordz]

How did you go about fermentation? Here are two popular methods: holding the wort at room temp for during the lag phase and bringing down to lager temp once fermentation begins. Or starting at lager temp straight away (usually needs a little more yeast). If you did the cold start method you usually don't need a diacetyl rest because the yeast wasn't exposed to warm temps and didn't create too much diacetyl and esters. If you started warm chances are the beer will have some diacetyl along with some esters. In this case you let the beer sit for about a day at room temp (60ish) then rack it to the secondary and start to bring it down to lagering temperature, then ager for the required time.

 

[Yooper]

Some lager yeasts don't produce much diacetyl and you might not need a d-rest if you used one of those. Generally, the d-rest is done when fermentation is about 75% finished and it should be done in the primary (it's the yeast that eat the diacetyl, so you don't want to rack off of the yeast cake before you do the d-rest). So, when you're about 75% done, check the sg and do the d-rest. After the d-rest, rack to secondary. Do the secondary at the temp suggested by your yeast strain, usually 50 or so, and after about 2 weeks of secondary, start dropping your temp about 5 degrees per day until you hit 34 degrees or so and then lager for 6 weeks.

 

[GrundleCruncher]

I held the wort at 65 deg. until fermentation started, so I guess I'll bring it up slowly. Thanks for the help.