Got it fermenting last night and that is going well. Keeping temp between 64-68 for a few days. After high Krausen I am adding sugar and letting the temp go, It wont be getting higher than 72. Then comes my question…
Most of my information for this recipe comes from Zymurgy mag.
Its after roughly 8 days to Let it sit for 21 days at temps near 32. Ive never “lagered.” Do I need to rack to a secondary (wasn’t planning to rack to secondary and never have before). Can I just put my primary in the fridge?
2, Does it have to be 21 days?
Will i see a real benefit vs letting it stay in primary for 3 weeks under 70 degrees?
You can lager in fermenter. If you keg you can go ahead and transfer to keg and lager in it. You don’t have to bulk lager it though. If you bottle you go ahead and package in bottles and lager in them. It’s up to you.
Edit: I added the below this AM:
2. IMO … no.
3. I package as soon as the fermentation is complete. I move it to the freezer side of a side-by-side refrigerator fitted with a temp controller to clear/condition/lager/mature/carbonate. Once I have a keg kick, and the conditioning beer is clear, I move the conditioning keg to the serving line. IOW conditioning may last 2 weeks or a month or more. It depends.
I understand you want to get it right so you want to follow the ‘rules’. However, there are a lot of ways to brew beer. Like many things in life 1+1 does not necessarily = 2. “It depends” is a common theme in a home brewery.