Big Lager Woes

[foyboy]

Made a 7.5 gal.batch of Celebrator+Dopple ,,Sg of 1.092! Extra 1/2 # maple sugar-1/2# DME -extra # 2 row and a good concoction mash, hit all steps then 156 for an hour. But my WL 833 starters did'nt do well last week so I quick got 3 packets of Wyeast Munich Lager and did 1 starter on the stirplate ,1 swirled around every few hours and one at pitching.The yeast says good for 9% and I think I will be right there. Is there anything I can do during my fermentation that would help the situation.I am at 50 degrees

 

[daksin]

Go buy more yeast right now. You really need to use a calculator to figure out how many cells you need. You have massively underpitched this beer- bad for any beer, but literally one of the worst things you can do for a big lager. If your wyeast was made yesterday (it wasn't) you would have needed 7 vials to properly ferment this beer (about 650 billion cells), or 5L of starter with 2 vials in it. A stepped starter would have been the way to go.

 

[Darwin18]

I'll echo what Daksin said. Most beers benefit from a starter with liquid yeast but with lagers you actually really need to pitch a healthy yeast starter.

 

[GarageDweller]

Sounds like its going to depend on how big your two starters were...might have been better to do all 3 vials in one large starter. definitely gotta check the yeastcalc or mr malty calc to see where you need to be. hopefully it works out, but for lagers, the yeast count is very important.

 

[kblankenship11]

I'm a bit confused but it sounds like you did a starter to begin with? Then things lagged and you got 3 new packs of yeast and did starters with those? Has it been over one week without visible signs of fermentation? If you are right that the yeast was 9% viable you can be in big trouble as it's hard to get those to where you need without a multiple-step starter. It would help if you could give us an original gravity reading and a current gravity reading.

If your gravity has changed there isn't much you can do other than pitching more viable yeast (a starter in high-kreusen). If the gravity has not changed, you can aerate the wort to get more oxygen in solution for the yeast, which is critical during the lag phase. A lot of people do this in the 12-16 hour window after pitching with huge beers.

Since it sounds like it's been over a week, I'm sure the yeast has done something. Best thing to do is get a fresh pack of yeast, get a starter going with recommended amount of yeast-nutrient and pitch it once it hits high-kreusen.

With such a high gravity, if you pitch additional yeast too late the environment is going to be volatile for whatever you pitch (high alcohol content and no O2) so better get to it quick!

 

[sweetcell]

this isn't helpful now, but maybe for future reference:

for big lagers, consider pitching on top of a yeast cake from another batch. brew up a helles, standard bock, etc and use it as a glorified starter for the doppel.

 

[foyboy]

No, I do know how to brew a lager but the fact that my stepped up starters with wl833 were not looking healthy that I decided to go to wyeast munich lager .My starters if healthy and by the looks of them they were I figure I have close to 700 billion but I brewed a BIG beer and my concern is ALC% (9) and Munich Lager yeast which peters out about 9%. Fermentation took off great decanted yeast 50 degrees ---wort 50 about 5 hours and it was kicking out bubbles .Question is ,,is brewing cold better to keep yeast going or warmer to keep it going ??????????