First Lager

[jessebymail]

Doing my first lager in my keezer. Its been 7 days in primary at 54 degrees. OG was 1.05 just racked to secondary and its at 1.014. Its really sweet still. Im doing diacetyl rest now at 60 till Monday. Will it finish fermenting after i racked it? I plan on dropping the temperature to 36 after diacetyl rest. And letting it sit 3-4 weeks. My bdays next week so i was in a hurry to lager it since i want my 2 kegs cold.
Am i doing the d rest and lager right, should i have done the d rest before racking?

 

[jafo28]

Doing the D-rest in primary probably would have been better, but you might have enough yeast in suspension to clean it up. Did you start your fementation warm and then cool it or did you start down at 54º? If you started cold you might not even need a d-rest. You can take a sample and test it for diacetyl check this thread out.https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/diacetyl-test-108077/ I think there are a couple other threads on doing this, the search function works pretty good on this forum. I've been on other forums that the search sucked. When I did my first lager I used it a lot.

 

[Yooper]

Doing my first lager in my keezer. Its been 7 days in primary at 54 degrees. OG was 1.05 just racked to secondary and its at 1.014. Its really sweet still. Im doing diacetyl rest now at 60 till Monday. Will it finish fermenting after i racked it? I plan on dropping the temperature to 36 after diacetyl rest. And letting it sit 3-4 weeks. My bdays next week so i was in a hurry to lager it since i want my 2 kegs cold.
Am i doing the d rest and lager right, should i have done the d rest before racking?

Always, but always, the diacetyl rest is done before racking.

Remember that it's the yeast that clean up the diacetyl. After the fermentable sugars are gone, or almost gone, the yeast are still active and looking to digest anything they can. It's then that they digest diacetyl and other waste products. You want to do the diacetyl rest while primary is still active, but may be winding down so you don't produce esters. Usually, the diacetyl rest is done in primary when you're 75% of the way to FG. That's usually between day 7-10 and with an SG of 1.020 or so.

 

[jessebymail]

Thanks guys, so i started my fermentation at 68 and put it in the keezer 12 hours later after it was active. Yooper, thats pretty much what i've read but is it the yeast in suspension that clean it up or is the yeast cake on the bottom active. I am anout 80% through my fermentation so i hope its bubbling away when i get home. Just left parlor 88 tried purple haze, wild blue, big sky ipa, and schfly oatmeal stout. Good stuff.

 

[jessebymail]

Well I have left it at 60 for three days now and the gravity is 1.01 and there was a little krausen around the top. I think it may be done, my fault for racking too early I know. It should have been fully fermentable I had a mash temp starting at 152 and ending at 148. It's still too sweet for my taste but I will let it sit a while longer at 60 and see what it does.

I'm thinking of dry hopping this to balance it out, what do you think? It's a light lager with 15% rice and 17 IBU's of tettnanger hops.