Friday, July 10, 2020

Adventures in lagering

from the old Google Sites site...

Pitching:

Always use a yeast starter. always.

Fermentation: 

day 1 start at 60ish and chill to 48 - 54

Primary: 

hold at 50 ish

After primary has completed, raise to 60 - 65 for 24 to 48 hours.

For additional clean up you can Krausen the beer at this point. The point of krausening is to add actively fermenting wort to the finished beer to clean up any fermentation byproducts. Make a mini-brew (hopless?), get the yeast going and add it to the bigger batch.  1/2 gal would work.

Lagering:

Store at 36 - 42f for 3 plus weeks. Extended lagering can lead to oxidation of the finished beer.

Oxidation is the enemy here. You need to get the oxygen out of the carboy. This could be done by adding some fermentable sugar to the beer. (or by Krausening the beer after racking to secondary) Or by bottling before cold storage? J Palmer says that conditioning is best done in secondary because more yeast are available for cleanup. He also mentions oxidation as being a problem.

A split approach could work here. 4-6 weeks in secondary at 38f, then bottle, raise temp to 50 for conditioning and back down to 38f for storage.

Bottling:

Prime with DME. Pitching more yeast will speed things up and ensure healthy yeast.

Make a fermentation schedule and stick to it, you'll be glad you did. 

Pics or it didn't happen!






- BrewNorth