Lagering an ale?

[Sasquatch]

What happens if you do a prolonged cool or cold secondary with ale yeast? Anything good? I like using ale yeasts to get a nice full draught-style lager out of bottles. But I haven't tried lagering them proper, and I wonder if I should?

 

[Orfy]

I guess not a lot. The ale yeast will be dormant at lagering temperatures.

 

[Catfish]

At real lagering temps I wouldn't expect your yeast to be very active. I get some bubbles out of the carboys sitting in my 10c closet. I don't know whether the flavors are improved due to the yeast activity or just the aging of hte beer... maybe it is doing nothing.

 

[Kaiser]

Koelsh style ales are lagered (secondary) near freezing to give them their lager-like smothness.

Kai

 

[Baron von BeeGee]

I don't know about flavor, but I've been putting my secondaries in the garage since it got cool (usually 45-50F in there) which has helped a lot with clarification.

 

[DeRoux's Broux]

it can only help an ale to cold condition in the secondary. as BeeGee pointed out, it's helps clarity and i belive it helps the flavor. i always crash my ales to 32 once i rack to secondary. let 'em sit for a week or so,then keg. many micro's do this w/ the ale's too (Real Ale Brewing Co. is one).

 

[Sasquatch]

Cool. No pun intended.
I just built a lager box and it's sitting at 55 degrees. So I think I'll drop an ale in there for now!

 

[msa8967]

Sorry to revive an old thread but I was wanting to know how long do you lager the ale prior to kegging or bottling? I have a cream ale style beer that has been cold crashed for 5 days. I want to serve this at a party in 2 months. I am trying to make a BMC style beer for non-homebrew drinkers. I have 2 options:

Let the ale stay at cold crashing condition temps for 4 weeks and then transfer to a keg and lager it for 4 weeks or

Rack the beer into a keg now and lager it for 8 weeks.

The beer is in a plastic fermenting bucket (primary fermentor). I don't have any secondary containers free that I can transfer this beer into.

 

[mjohnson]

I'd keg now, carbonate and lager. It'll be great!