I did it, so now you don’t have to.
I can definitively say that 8 weeks on the yeast cake resulted in autolysis in my lager.
And it’s gross. Toss in what I’m calling astringency (weird back of the mouth drying/bitter grossness) from too much hop matter making it into the fermentor, and this beer is just plain bad…
Ouch, thanks for the experimental data Phil. Hope you have another batch nearing completion.
I hear you… It’s happened to me enough times as well to know that autolysis is real. I can’t remember now if I set my rule of thumb to 6 weeks or to 8 weeks but it’s in that ballpark to where if you’re planning on going any longer than about 6 weeks, start to be concerned that it could go bad. These days I try to get my beer into bottles or secondary if necessary within 4-6 weeks max so I haven’t had this problem for many years now.
I’ve had beers hit 6 weeks before, and till now never noticed any issues. This was a pale lager though, so that could be a factor.
Could be yeast dependent as well. This was a WLP835/WYE-2001 split batch. I couldn’t detect any autolysis flavors in the 2001, but that was the most astringent. (still brown hop gunk floating on the beer.)
So I didn’t dump them immediately…
The brothy brew (this was a 10 gal split batch) was still gross upon warming from 32o to room temp. Dumped that one.
The astringent one tasted fine, and damn close to Pilsner Urquell. (my target.) Kegged that one, will see how it tastes carbed and served at 50o.
I’m excited. For my first lager this one latter half may not be bad at all. I think I’ll try a bock next…that’s my favorite style.