Post-Bottling Carbonation Question

[cactussam]

Ok, so I started a honey lager a couple weeks ago and a few days ago bottled them and tossed them in the fridge. Because I didn't have a good place to let things sit and ferment at ideal temperatures, I used a high temperature lager yeast (Wyeast 2112), which has ideal temperatures between 65-72F.

My question is: now that I have bottles in the fridge (nice and cold), will they still carb up? I'm curious about it since the yeast seemed to be active in warmer temperatures if I should let the bottles sit out for a week first to carb up and THEN put into the fridge to lager, or if I'd be ok just setting them in the fridge for lagering.

Another way of asking my questions would be, if 4 weeks from now (what the recipe specifies for the lagering period) the beer isn't carbed up, and I have to let it sit at warmer temps to carbonate, am I gonna have to restart the lagering process all over or should it be good to go from there?

I'm not really familiar with what changes happen inside the beer during lagering/carbonation...

 

[Revvy]

I carb all my beers, whether they are ales of lagers at or above 70 degrees.

 

[brewd00d]

I would agree with The Rev, i think i would take an extreme amount of time to carbonate, if it even happens at all due to the low temp, the higher the temp the faster the yeast carbonates, the lower the temp the slower the activity is.

i for one, have done so, with one sample to try. it sat in there for 1 month, it was flatter than kate hudson. (well atleast before the implants.)

 

[VTBrewer]

You're not really lagering at this point. Lagering is typically done still in a fermentation vessel at cold temperatures, often as low as 34-35 degrees or so. There's no such thing as lagering after your beer carb, but you could bottle condition them.

So basically you want to get your bottles at 70 degrees for 3 weeks and then chill/condition for as long as you'd like. The next time you go to lager a beer, you should look into doing it in a fermentation vessel. The yeast you chose for this brew will do just fine with the temp and time you fermented at, so you're still good. You'll have something much like an anchor steam, as that's the yeast strain you used.