Need help with lagering setup

[Electric Brewer]

Hi brewers and brewettes.

I'm looking at a way to manage cold fermentation. I would like to setup a chest freezer and keep it at 35f. But my problem is, how can I cold ferment the beers?

I already have a second fridge in my living room that acts as a kegerator, and a chest freezer that acts as a chest freezer. The girlfriend is already overwhelmed by my setup. I live in a condo and the entrance have three fermenters in the way already. I use the entrance as a cold room that I manage to keep at 55f. But as soon as spring comes, that won't be an option anymore.

I have a ss brewtech brew bucket that I could get the heating add-on. Could I put it in the lagering freezer and keep it warmer? Would this put too much strain on the freezer?

Should I find a warm fermentetion yeast that I can also lager at 35f? Ferment in a keg under pressure and the lager?

How are you guys managing it?

 

[jdauria]

I don't think any yeast can cold ferment at 35F. Most lager leasts can ferment as low as 46-48F, but need a bigger yeast pitch to do so, like 2 billion cells/ml/degrees Plato. And cold fermenting lagers in high 40's prevents the precursor to diacetyl from forming, thus no need to do a d-rest. You would need a temp controller and something to warm the chest freezer up...heat belt, reptile heater, something like that. Set the temp controller for say 47, with a 1 degree variance...so that it will turn the freezer on at 48 degrees and turn off at 46.

 

[Electric Brewer]

That is exactly my dilemma. I plan on using the freezer with a temp controller a keep it at 35 for the lagering beers in their own cornys. I can't also ferment in the same freezer, because then I could only do one batch every two months.i would really like to have a few cornys slowly lagering.

Maybe I could get the chilling add-on for the brew bucket to manage the fermentation, then stack the cornys in the freezer. But 400$ Canadian monopoly money for the setup seems pretty high when I could just get a second freezer.

 

[jdauria]

Ah, with you now. To be honest, I don't think it would hurt the lagering kegs if every now and then you raise the temp up to 50 for a few weeks, before bringing back down after the lager in fermenter is done. This time of the year, in cold New England, I ferment lagers in my basement with a mini-fridge that has a bucket of water/glycol that I pump into a cooling jacket around the carboy. But in the summer, I need to ferment in a fridge, that I also lager kegs in...and there have been no adverse effects to other kegs being warmed up and cooled down. Is your freezer in a basement, being in Canada? if so, I assume your basement is cool even in summer? Then you could always just take kegs out of freezer while fermenting, I have done that too without a problem. My "lager" fridge can only hold two kegs at once...so if I need to ferment in it, or cold crash, or have a new keg to lager...the oldest keg gets pulled out and left at cellar temps.