Tis the season...for cold basments. Psuedo Lagering

[permo]

My basement now holds at 60-62 degrees and will be dropping in the mid to upper fifties soon for the remainder of the winter. This is not the best for a lot of the ale yeast strains. So I have decided to maybe try my hand at longer, cooler fermentations with ale yeasts.

The one yeast that comes to mind is nottingham. Do you think I could make a beer that has lager like smoothness and characteristics if I fermented nottingham in the 55-60 degree range. Here is what I am thinking

9 pounds of german pale ale malt
8 oz munich

1 oz perle at 60
1 perl at 30
1 oz saaz at flameout
1 oz saaz dry hop

mash at 151

ferment for a week in primary at 57 degrees
ferment in secondary for two weeks at 57 degrees
bottle, prime and store for a month at 57 degrees.

I didn't plug the numbers into beersmith so I am not sure about the hop schedule

 

[petep1980]

I've been told repeatedly you can ferment with a Kolsch yeast at those temps and get lager characteristics.

I am going to quickly get an ale going before my basement really chills. Right now it's 63, and I snagged some 1028 which says it can go down to 58.

 

[phatuna]

This from Danstar's website in regards to Nottingham:

The recommended fermentation temperature range of this strain is 14° to 21°C (57° to 70°F) with good tolerance to low fermentation temperatures (12°C/54°F) that allow this strain to be used in lager-style beer. With a relatively high alcohol tolerance, Nottingham is a great choice for creation of higher-alcohol specialty beers!

 

[permo]

I have to say, that so far I am impressed with the performance of the post recall nottingham. It took off like a banchee and is bubbling away at 62 degrees in a maple nut brown. Heck, maybe I just pitch my psuedo lager right on the cake...

 

[tincob]

permo, crazy suggestion, take it for what it's worth.

I wonder whether you could rig up a swamp cooler setup in your basement to drop the fermentation temperature even further down.

Don't know if that would be better for the pseudo lager or not.

 

[Scimmia]

The other two that come to mind are PacMan and Cry Havoc. Both are purported to be ale yeasts that you can lager with.

 

[KayaBrew]

You can also brew with lager yeasts at the low end of ale fermenting temps for a "steam" style beer. I brew a really nice IPA with lager yeast and ferment at 55-60F, and it is very tasty!

 

[magnj]

The other two that come to mind are PacMan and Cry Havoc. Both are purported to be ale yeasts that you can lager with.

Yea Pacman is supposed to be good down to 48F so I'm definitely going to try that out in the basement this winter.

 

[permo]

interesting thoughts on the yeast guys. Thank you so much. Here is what i am going to do. I had a six pack of kolsch that I brewed with whilelabs liquid kolsch yeast in the fridge. I dipsatched with the six pack and harvested the yeast sediment and made a starter. The starter is now fermenting. I am not pitching this starter into any beer, but basically just going to wash the yeast from the starter to get a good batch of yeast to pitch a single kolsch out of early next year. Then I will harvest/wash a bunch of kolsch yeast from that batch and kolsch/lager in my basement all winter.


I even have an evil experiment to try. I may combine notty and kolsch in a batch and see what happens. I already have a house ale yeast that I derrived from S-04 and US-05 and I may do the same to get a house pseudo-lager...ale yeast.