Traditional vs. Quick Lager Experiment

[BrickBrewHaus]

I’ve been brewing lagers almost exclusively, using the quick lager method, for the last year and half. Over that time, I’ve made some very tasty beers. I’d always intended on doing some sort of side-by-side experiment, but a year went by and I was still operating under the assumption that a quick lager beer was as equally tasty as a beer made in a more traditional way. Then the opportunity came to conduct a larger scale experiment with my homebrewing club, Johnson County Brewing Society.

Navigate over to our club’s page to download the full write-up to get details on the fermentation schedule used by each brewer, who used gelatin, recipes, etc.

I’ll summarize here though. There were four brewers, each brewer making a unique lager style beer. Each brewer made two versions of their beer; one version fermented in a more traditional manner, the other as a quick lager. The two versions were made using the exact same malt/hops/yeast/water-ish. The traditional lagers were brewed about 9 weeks before the quick lager and lagered for approximately 9-10 weeks whereas the quick lager was brewed 3 weeks (or less) prior to the tasting and, effectively, wasn’t lagered at all.

At the meeting, the four beers were presented to the participants as four different flights, each flight contained one cup of the traditional lager and one cup of the quick lager. The participants were asked to fill out a survey and answer questions such as: rate the perceived differences in appearance, aroma, flavor, etc.; which beer was quick lagered; and which beer did you prefer.

The full write-up has detailed survey results, but here’s the cliff notes version….56% of responses preferred the traditional lager, 34% preferred the quick lager, and 11% had no preference. Nearly a 2:1 ratio of participants preferring the traditional lager.

Also, for those who haven’t read Brulosophy’s exBEERiment on quick vs traditional lager, take a look. In short, he found that “16 participants (P<0.05) would have had to correctly identify the quick lager sample as being unique. In the end, 17 tasters (p=0.01) made the accurate selection.” “The traditionally fermented lager was preferred by 11 of the 17 tasters with another 4 preferring the quick lager batch and 2 saying they noticed a difference by had no preference.” That’s nearly a 3:1 ratio of tasters preferring the traditional lager. His results pretty closely mirrored our results, at least in terms of which method produced the more preferable beer to the participants.

This was a really fun experiment for me to plan and execute. It’s also been interesting evaluating the results, especially regarding how they will affect my lager brewing practices. I was convinced that Brulosophy’s exBEERiment would have been different had he used gelatin in the quick lager, thinking that the suspended yeast contributed some unwanted character to the beer. But after tasting our beers, I’m no longer convinced that that matters. I still don’t have a desire to brew full-blown, extended lagering beers, but this experiment has me leaning towards more traditional lager methods, just in a shorter time frame. Time will tell. Thanks for reading.

 

[BigMack]

I think you would find a difference in any beer lagered for 9 weeks vs one that wasn't lagered at all. You've thrown another variable in by fermenting them at different temps and lagering them for completely different amounts of time. Most of my beers are at their best when the keg is almost kicked because they've effectively been lagering the entire time.

Also, if you go back to the brulosophy site and look through all of the fermentation temp experiments (34/70 specifically) you will find that many of them don't reach significance.

 

[BrickBrewHaus]

I think you would find a difference in any beer lagered for 9 weeks vs one that wasn't lagered at all.

I don't disagree. But a lot of talk around the interwebs might lead someone to think otherwise. BTW, my own bias would've liked to think otherwise too.

You've thrown another variable in by fermenting them at different temps and lagering them for completely different amounts of time.

If I'm understanding you correctly, no, the four brewers did not ferment at the same temp. I didn't intend for them to do so. Each flight contained one cup of, say, the traditional Helles and one cup of the quick Helles. There were four flights. The goal was to compare Helles to Helles, Oktoberfest to Oktoberfest, etc. Not Helles to Oktoberfest. Two of the brewers chose to ferment their two beers at the same temp (Dunkle at 49F and Oktoberfest at 55F), the other two chose to ferment their two beers at different temps.

Thanks for the feedback.

 

[BigMack]

If I'm understanding you correctly, no, the four brewers did not ferment at the same temp. I didn't intend for them to do so. Each flight contained one cup of, say, the traditional Helles and one cup of the quick Helles. There were four flights. The goal was to compare Helles to Helles, Oktoberfest to Oktoberfest, etc. Not Helles to Oktoberfest. Two of the brewers chose to ferment their two beers at the same temp (Dunkle at 49F and Oktoberfest at 55F), the other two chose to ferment their two beers at different temps.

Thanks for the feedback.

I was speaking of the fermentation temps for quick vs traditional on two of the beers. Just giving my thoughts on the matter, wasn't trying to come across like I was bashing the experiment or anything. I appreciate the effort put into experiments like this (which is why I don't do them). Keep on keeping on

 

[Morrey]

I did a Helles and tasted it a few days after kegging. I thought I had royally messed up this beer and figured i'd pitch it sooner or later. Long story short, it ended up lagering a couple of months undisturbed in my 34F chamber. It ends up being of the better lager beers I've made. I honestly cant see how there is any shortcut for time allowances for lagering/conditioning.

 

[Patrick87]

Interesting. I'll be brewing my first lager on Saturday,and was planning on using more of a quick-lager schedule. I have an India Pale Lager planned, followed by two Helles Lagers. Sounds like there may be more benefit to longer cold conditioning than I thought.

 

[BrickBrewHaus]

Interesting. I'll be brewing my first lager on Saturday,and was planning on using more of a quick-lager schedule. I have an India Pale Lager planned, followed by two Helles Lagers. Sounds like there may be more benefit to longer cold conditioning than I thought.

Meh, give quick lager a shot. Its low cost of entry. At worst you're drinking good beer at 3 weeks and it only gets better from there. At best, you're drinking really good beer at 3 weeks with slight improvement with time.

That's one aspect of this experiment that was difficult to deal with. Yes, more people preferred the traditional lager. But that doesn't really quantify by how much they preferred it. Using a BJCP-style survey would've been nice to get actual numbers. Maybe the traditional beer would've scored a 40 while the quick lager scored a 38, I dunno.

 

[mongoose33]

Curious why you didn't do a triangle test.

As to the proportions, you're not really 2-1 in preferring the traditional lager. It's 1.65-1, throwing out those who had no preference. Or, if you will, among those who stated a preference, 62 percent preferred the traditional lagered beer, 38 percent the quick lager. Or, if you will, 56 percent of the total preferred the traditional lager, while 44 percent had no preference or preferred the quick lager.

I'm not usually one to nitpick on people doing exbeeriments because I think it's a valuable information source for the homebrewing community. And even when there are potential flaws in the method, if we have enough people do those experiments, we can in a way do a meta analysis of the results (If 7 people all do the same exbeeriment and get the same results, that's a more powerful outcome than one person doing it).

And so, as gently as I can, let me identify a couple areas that might, next time, be done better.

• Was the exbeeriment is "blind" or not? Did the participants know the nature of the exbeeriment? Since the answer is "yes," it may have influenced the results.
  
• Did the results vary depending on whose beers they were comparing? Or were the results all mixed together?
  
• Had the quick-lager beer smoothed out at all if you waited another week or two? (this is not an experimental flaw, because you were comparing what you were comparing, just wondering if a bit longer conditioning time for the quick lager might have helped).

Anyway, bully for you for doing some exbeerimental work. My LHBC is going to do an all-grain versus extract throwdown next year, which results I'm curious about. However, they won't be done as well as yours because it's unlikely we'll control water.

 

[BrickBrewHaus]

Most of these were addressed in the full write-up, but may have buried.

Curious why you didn't do a triangle test.

The meeting topic was announced well in advance and the experiment was discussed on our group FB page months beforehand. Everyone/most knew of the "variable." Therefore I tried to come up with survey questions that were based on an objective, side-by-side tasting.

Was the exbeeriment is "blind" or not? Did the participants know the nature of the exbeeriment? Since the answer is "yes," it may have influenced the results.

See above. Yes, its very possible they were influenced. My hope was that the questions I used were not subject to personal bias.

Did the results vary depending on whose beers they were comparing? Or were the results all mixed together?

The full write-up has every beer split out. There are some variances. One example, fewer people reported a "noticeable" difference as the beers got darker. Perhaps this was a function of the slightly more assertive flavors covering up any differences due to the variable being tested. Or maybe it was complete coincidence.

Had the quick-lager beer smoothed out at all if you waited another week or two? (this is not an experimental flaw, because you were comparing what you were comparing, just wondering if a bit longer conditioning time for the quick lager might have helped).

This is something I'm interested in monitoring as well. As for my dunkle, I can tell the differences are less now. The quick lager on the night of the club tasting had a (excuse my inarticulate beer descriptors) green character, it just tasted young, whereas the lagered version had a malty roundness to it with no harsh edges. Two weeks later, the main difference between them is that the quicker lagered version has an all-around more assertive hop character to it. As that begins to fade, and I assume the traditional version will fade less quickly from this point on, then I expect the two will begin to converge.

 

[casualbrewer]

I did a Helles and tasted it a few days after kegging. I thought I had royally messed up this beer and figured i'd pitch it sooner or later. Long story short, it ended up lagering a couple of months undisturbed in my 34F chamber. It ends up being of the better lager beers I've made. I honestly cant see how there is any shortcut for time allowances for lagering/conditioning.

The only real shortcut would be filtering like the big guys do but it is hard to do at our level.

 

[ericbw]

The only real shortcut would be filtering like the big guys do but it is hard to do at our level.

Filtering is pretty easy - we made a filter set up for cider. Ideally, you need some extra kegs and it's a little messy.