First brew advice - Young's lager

[MCGroves]

So I swiped my old man's christmas present last week. After a bad brew on his first attempt he has given this one a miss so me and a mate have dived in headfirst with no experience and the minimalist instructions that Young's include with their kit.

So basically, my lager has been in the spare room for a week fermenting. We have the Young's fermentation bucket and as far as I can tell it's still fermenting. We have a Young's 5 gallon pressure keg for when it's ready to be transferred, but we have two main concerns that we have struggled to find good information on.

Firstly, we basically have no clue when our brew is ready to be kegged. The instructions with the kit said 4-6 days in a FV, whereas every other homebrew site I've been on has said a week minimum up to a month max is the ideal time for a lager. What steps should we take next?

And secondly, I've seen good instructions for priming lager to be bottled, but none for kegging. Do you just pop in the same amount of sugar solution for a keg as you would with bottles, but all in one go? Again, the kit instructions were shocking.

If you could give us some help to get us up and running, I will be more than grateful!

 

[kh54s10]

I don't know about this kit but generally lagers are supposed to be fermented long and cold. You generally need a temperature controlled refrigerator to do a lager. I have not done any lagers because of this requirement and I think that it is normal to primary for about 2 weeks then secondary for a few more.
For kegging you can use the co2 for carbing and don't need any sugar solution.

Read up.. This forum is a wealth of information and links to other sources are often posted.

 

[bajarob]

So are you saying that the hand pump or CO2 will carbonate the beer? I thought it was just for getting the beer out of the keg.

 

[VillageBrew]

So are you saying that the hand pump or CO2 will carbonate the beer? I thought it was just for getting the beer out of the keg.

In reference to your "hand pump" question: the kegs are carbed from the brewery before it reaches the store. For home brewing, you have to carb the kegs by adding CO2. This can be done over a quick three day session or a week long version. Either way, the answer to you questions are;
1) A hand pump will not carb the beer,
2) CO2 will carb it.

 

[RobWalker]

I've done a "warm lager" and it's not bad. Tastes like a bland, uninteresting, single-hop beer...so mission accomplished, more or less.

Kit instructions suck on the whole, they don't factor in a lot of variables. I would personally move the keg somewhere that it can settle out on its own (cold and high enough to be syphoned off) and transfer into your keg once it's cleared. It's basically ready to drink then, it's probably been aged enough to round off the bad flavours and all you need to do is carb and enjoy!