Is my Maibock ready for the Diacetyl rest?

[Bisco_Ben]

So I brewed up a Maibock with an OG of 1.071 on the 12th (9 days ago) with the Wyeast Munich Lager yeast. It has been fermenting between 50* and 55* during that time, and the gravity reading I just took was at 1.022. Beersmith seems to think that my FG will be 1.016 so I am obviously not within the standard FG range for the style yet. I am pretty new to brewing lagers and am still unsure of when the Diacetyl rest should be performed. I would like to free up my fermentation chamber so that I can brew tomorrow, so my question being: Is my beer ready the be brought up to room temp (66*) for the D-rest? and if not, when would be a good time to pull it out? Any help would be much appreciated!

 

[SpeedYellow]

The rule-of-thumb is to do the d-rest when you're about 75% of the way to FG. You are roughly 90% of the way there. No worries; it's ok to do it a bit late. BUT you may want to taste it; many folks don't bother with a d-rest if it doesn't taste like it needs it.

Also, your fermentation is taking a bit long. 3-weeks and it's still not done means that you didn't have enough healthy yeast. So either you underpitched or else the yeast just were a bit under the weather, so to speak.

 

[Bisco_Ben]

Thanks for the quick response SpeedYellow, I just took the fermenter out and will leave it at 66*F for the next 3-5 days before transferring to a keg for lagering. The gravity sample tasted great so I assume that the fermentation was as clean as necessary, but I would like to get a few more gravity points down and absolutely insure that there is no Diacetyl. And it has only been 9 days (less than 2 weeks), NOT 3 weeks, so I feel that there is still hope to get down to within the FG range for the style.

 

[theWilly]

How much did you pitch?

I started my first lager 7 days ago. OG was 1.067. I pitched (3) 11.5g dry packs, rehydrated and pitched at ferm temp. Just took a reading and gravity is at 1.016. I don't expect it to go any lower.

3 packs sounds like a lot but according to the calculators I was still a little under target.

I started on ales and unknowingly under pitched a lot which resulted in long ferm times and FG's higher than expected. I also had to age out the beers a lot, I wasn't getting really off flavors but in hindsight I believe it took time to clean them up after under pitching. You may want to read up on starters and dry vs liquid yeast. Possibly try pitching more next time. I'm very glad I spent the extra couple bucks and pitched a higher rate, I didn't expect this beer to be so far along for at least another week.

 

[Bisco_Ben]

I revived a year old pack of Munich lager from wyeast. I made a 1.5 liter starter followed by a step up of .8L so about 2.3L overall. I used mr malty and came up with those numbers and although It was old it seemed to take off quick both in the starter and the actual beer. I hope these next few days of D-restin' get me down to 1.016


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