Alright, I’ve seen a lot of delicious sounding/looking lagers and pilsners on this forum and I feel like it’s time to take a crack at one as I’ve exclusively brewed ales to this point.
So my first lager noob question is, does my lager have to lager in the fermentation chamber or can I lager in the bottle? Second: what would be a good first recipe/yeast to try out if I wanted to just go for a 1-2 gallon batch? Opinions on temperature ramping along with said recipe/yeast selection would be handy too. If it helps, I think simpler would be better for first go-round in terms of both recipe, yeast and fermentation ramp schedule. I’m not incredibly picky when it comes to style in the lager category but dry and spicy pilsners are hard to beat IMO. Thanks!
In my limited lager experience W34/70 works great and might be a good option for smaller batch size. It is very versatile and forgiving at less than idea temps (from what I hear). It is the same strain as WY2124 from what I understand. I did a pale lager with it that turned out spectacular.
There is a lot of information out there regarding an accelerated lager fermentation schedule. For me, I keep it at 52F for a few days or until airlock activity starts to slow then ramp it up a couple of degrees a day until it is at 60-62 for a diacetyl rest then back down. This is usually about 15 days in total for me.
Lots of different ways to make good lagers. My preferences and general process:
Yeast selection is important. You really cannot go wrong with Wyeast 2206. W-34/70 is also a favorite. Beware WLP820, it’s a bad yeast for many reasons.
With a small batch, you are fortunate! You can skip making a starter. Otherwise, making a starter is crucial.
I like to chill my wort down to about 48-50 F. Then pitch and let that go until fermentation seems like it’s slowing down, then check the gravity. When gravity is half of what you started with (e.g., 1.060 turns into 1.030) then taste it and warm it up a few degrees. If it tastes like sulfur or buttery at all (diacetyl), then keep it in the 60s for several days. Otherwise mid 50s would be good enough. In either case, it will probably finish fermenting within a week after you warm it up, and warmer temperatures will only help it and not hurt. Once you are certain that fermentation is totally done (check gravity over the course of 3 or 4 days at least), then you should cold crash it until the beer is clear. This can take a few days or a few weeks. If you want to speed things along, you can also add gelatin and then it will clear within 48 hours. From there you can bottle and have it finish up in the bottles. If you taste a bottle within a couple of weeks and it tastes like sulfur or diacetyl at all, don’t worry, just warm up your bottles for 2-3 weeks and these problems will disappear while the yeast eats the stuff. After about a month of conditioning, your lager should be ready to drink, and if you’re lucky, even sooner than that. However…
You’ll most likely find that if you can hang onto a few bottles for a good 6 to 9 months, the lager will just get better and better with age. Hang onto at least a few for that long and see what a difference it makes.
One of my first lagers was Ron “Bluesman” Price’s Ringler Pilsner. The recipe is in the main site’s recipe wiki and. Old not be much easier: 100% pilsner malt 2 additions of Hallertauer Mittelfrueh fermented with 830/833 or 34/70. I’ve done it with all 3 and they all rock in this recipe!
Edit to add: I think Ron knows what he’s doing as he now is a pro brewer, but I’m not certain is he is featuring this recipe or not in his lineup, but it don’t get much simpler imo
Lagering in the bottle should be fine. With temp control it seems like you don’t really need a long lagering period.
I did a 100% pils malt with saaz that was awesome and an oktoberfest split evenly between Pils, Vienna, & Munich. IMO the pils was better but I also pitched more yeast. W34/70 is a great idea since it saves you the trouble of building a large starter (then again with small batch you may be fine anyway?). And as I understand it theres less variance amount lager yeasts than ale.
The Brulosophy fast lager method worked great for my pils. Basically I ramped up the temp after a few weeks in then crashed it down to 30f for a couple days and added gelatin. Came out really clean tasting and clear as commercial beer.
Yes you can lager in the bottle. All lagering really does is clear chill haze and soften bitterness a little*, so if you can live with chill haze, lagering isn’t essential. However, at this time of year you can lager your bottles in an outdoor building for a few weeks if you don’t have a lagering fridge. Fining with gelatin before lagering at close to freezing point speeds up the lagering process.
For a first recipe I’d recommend Bee Cave Brewery Kolsch on the homebrewtalk website, which is made with a German Kolsch yeast (WLP029). Strictly speaking it’s a German ale yeast rather than a true lager yeast but the flavour it gives is delicious and very lager-like. You don’t need a giant starter and you can ferment at normal ale temps with it. The recipe produces a very pilsner-like beer that is spicy, crisp and hoppy - but with a bit of character from the Kolsch yeast. I prefer WLP029 to W34/70, which I’ve found a bit bland.
If you want to use a true lager yeast, you need to build a big starter and ferment cold. If you don’t have a brew fridge, you can cold ferment by putting your FV inside a sleeping bag or insulated container with a large (min 2 quart) frozen bottle of water. This will hold the temp at exactly the right level for 2-3 days before you need to change the bottle. WLP800 is the classic pilsner yeast and works well but is slow.
You need water low in bicarbonate hardness to make good pilsner, so you might need to treat your water before you mash.
edit: lagering also reduces diacetyl, but you can avoid that by raising the fermentation temp up to room temp for the last few days in the FV. See fast lager method on brulosophy as recommended by others on the thread.
Continuing to show how little I know about lagers (I love to drink them though!)… I’ve never heard this before. Is it just a continual smoothing out of any harshness from sulfur related byproducts? Also, when you crash cool lagers and/or add gelatin, does this still leave enough yeast in suspension for bottle conditioning?
Yep. Crashing and gel just take the yeast down below the visible threshold. There’ll still be plenty of yeast to do the job, assuming a roughly average OG. A big dopplebock might benefit from a little yeast at bottling, otherwise no worries.
Yes, exactly. And the malt flavors can become slightly more caramelly and thus more complex with age as well as they begin to oxidize slightly. Age I think is what gives some imported beers “that special German lager flavor” that I love so much. You don’t get it quite as much from a fresh lager, it takes time to mature.
Yes, not a problem at all, unless you lager it for a very long time, maybe 6 weeks or longer. Less than that, and you won’t need to worry, there’s enough yeast in there yet, even with gelatin.
I’ve tried the water container method too but really struggled to get the beer significantly cold that way. You need insulation to get the beer temp much lower than ambient and air is a much better insulator than water. The water method is very popular on forums but I think it’s better suited to keeping beer warm with an aquarium heater in cold weather.
I think your wrong on water being a good insulator.
The reason the water bath works is because the water has a very large specific heat capacity while air does not. It actually has one of the highest. Simply put, it takes more energy to increase the temperature of a gallon of water, than it does a gallon of air. While a water bath is a viable method to hold a beer in the lager range, it’s not practical. It will take cold wort, cold water, and a lot of ice bottles swapped out as the temp rises.
The same can be seen with unheated swimming pools. If water didn’t maintain its temp, unheated pools wouldn’t be useful in the morning or after sundown.
Exactly. I used the tub of water with water bottles for a few years with good results. Lots of thermal mass there. Just have to be regimented about changing the frozen bottles.
I didn’t say that. Water is a poor insulator but air is a good one.
And therein lies the problem. 5 gallons of beer already has a high thermal mass. Adding another few gallons in a trub of water increases it, so you need lots of ice bottles to bring the temperature down, especially in summer. Because it’s difficult to insulate the whole system, it’s continually absorbing warmth from the environment and you have to keep changing the ice bottles - twice daily in summer, despite the high thermal mass. I’ve tried both methods - trust me, the waterless method is much better. It only takes one or two ice bottles to bring the temp down to lager range and then it sits there thanks to the FV’s thermal mass and the insulation around it. It works the same way as a fridge - FV surrounded by cold air surrounded by insulation. I’ve got a batch of pilsner on the go at the moment and have only had to change the ice bottle once in the last week. It’s not a great picture but you can just see the ice bottle, now melted but I’m going to leave it and let temp rise a bit to finish off.
Air is not a good insulator when compared to water. Look at coolers. All goes to hell when some idiot drains the melted water from the cooler. All that does is make the new ice melt faster.
You’re example is flawed as it has an insulated bag. That’s the key to your idea, not the air. And I still don’t understand how your magic sleeping bag only takes a bottle a week when my chest freezer runs multiple times a day, even with a thermowell measuring the exact temp of the beer.
Using a cooler for a water bath is even better, but I think the biggest issue with water baths is the open surface. And like I said before, to work well, one needs to start with cold wort and cold water. Lowering wort 20° with either method isn’t practical.
Yep. Using the bag is the X factor, not the air. When I used a tub of water with frozen water bottles I had fermometers stuck to the buckets, which are accurate to a couple degrees F. The temp of the beer in the bucket was always within a couple degrees of the fermometer reading. So I added frozen bottles until the fermometer was in the range I wanted. As said, I wasn’t trying to cool 20 deg F. I cooled the wort to target pitching temps and used the tub/bottles to maintain that within reason. I medaled on a lager doing this, with comments on ‘clean fermentation’, so I was doing something right. Don’t get me wrong - I love my fridge/temp controller but it worked pretty well. I think Denny would agree - he did it for a long time.
The wall of a cooler uses air for insulation. You’re confusing insulation and thermal mass. Filling a cooler with water increases thermal mass, but the insulation comes from the air.
The bag insulates because its filling contains air. Fillings like hollowfibre trap a lot of air and prevent it convecting, so there’s very little heat transfer. That’s how sleeping bags keep you warm and it’s also how the wall of a fridge stops heat getting in. The air inside the bag isn’t the main form of insulation. You want the air inside the bag to circulate and conduct so that the heat energy in the beer is absorbed by the ice bottle, which will lower the beer temperature.
I use one or two bottles to get the wort down to pitching temp and then change maybe once or twice in the week, so it’s not just one bottle for a week. As I said earlier, I’ve only had to change the bottle once in the last week.
It is with adequate insulation. A two litre (about 2 quarts) bottle ice from a domestic freezers is a lot colder than freezing temp. They come out of my freezer at -27 Celsius but an average freezer will get ice to -18 Celsius. With perfect insulation that can lower a 5 gallon (19 litre) batch of beer to 7 Celsius (45 Fahrenheit). http://www.onlineconversion.com/mixing_water.htm
In practice insulation isn’t perfect and there’s some heat energy from the air inside the bag and the bag itself, so the beer doesn’t get quite that cold. Fermentation also creates a bit of heat.
As I said, I’ve tried both methods. If you’ve only tried one method and not the other, perhaps give it a go before offering an opinion on whether it works.
It’s the air trapped in the sleeping bag filling that makes it a good insulator, not the air around the FV - apologies if I wasn’t clear on this earlier.
There’s no doubt you can ferment lager at the right temperature with a trub of water and ice bottles. But it means changing the ice bottles very frequently as the absence of insulation allows the trub and the FV to warm up. It’s a lot of work, but it can be done. A couple of frozen water bottles inside an insulated bag works a lot better and can maintain a much larger difference in temperature between the beer and external environment. I have no problems fermenting lager at 10-12 Celsius in summer with this method.