Lagering in Primary?

[AviatorTroy]

My brewing situation is thus... I tend to have to leave town for extended periods of time with very little notice. I want to be able to use this to my advantage. Yeast work very well on their own, without me standing next to them cheering them on. So Ive been fine with ales being left in primary for up to 6 weeks untended.

I'm trying to brew more lagers these days, which require a little more attention. The idea is this...

My wife certainly does not mind helping me out with simple things but I'd never ask her to rack or anything like that without me being there. I call her and say things like "is it down to one bubble per minute? Go ahead and turn the digital temp control up to 62 for a few days."

Now, to lager, I don't really see why it would hurt to have her go straight from the dyactl rest to the lager. Just have her turn the controller down to 35. But with all that yeast and trub still in there? But since its at very low temps, I'm not too sure it would pick up too many off flavors or anything, at least if I rack it within a few weeks or so.

Whatcha think?

 

[JonK331]

I don't think it would be a problem, I add gelatin and cold crash for extended periods with my ales in the primary.

 

[tv187u]

bump

 

[malkore]

I think you're looking at issues if you rely on airlock bubbles as a gauge of fermentation activity.

That said, I've only done 2 lagers, without dedicated fermentation control and they both panned out very well. The tricky part when you're gone is deciding on whether it needs a diacetyl rest, sicne you're not there to test/taste it.

 

[markg388]

only one way to find out, let us know!

 

[Bottenbrew]

I used to lager in my primary back when I only had a primary, and for the most part it worked out fine. There is definitely a taste difference between lagering in a primary and racking to a secondary to lager, I just don't know how much of that difference is from the beer not sitting on the yeast cake versus differences in brew batches.

 

[Yooper]

I used to lager in my primary back when I only had a primary, and for the most part it worked out fine. There is definitely a taste difference between lagering in a primary and racking to a secondary to lager, I just don't know how much of that difference is from the beer not sitting on the yeast cake versus differences in brew batches.

Because lagers are so "clean" and crisp, I'd be very hesitant to lager on the yeast cake for 8-12 weeks. When I make a lager, the beer is usually in primary no longer than two weeks.

 

[Docjowles]

How long are you talking about here? I'm pretty sure (at a homebrewing scale) autolysis has been shown to be a myth, unless you're leaving it on the yeast cake for 3+ months. My feeling would be that it's totally fine to start lagering in the primary and then rack to a secondary vessel when time permits.

Like markg said, only one way to find out for sure