Just pitched 34/70 into 1.056 wort at 59F. I am thinking about keeping it around 60F until fermentation takes off then bringing it down to 55F or so. Does this sound about right? In a couple of weeks do a diacetyl rest around 65 before lagering?
How much lag time should I expect? I was thinking 24-36 hours.
Thanks. What temp should I bring it down to? Apparently it can run at 45f though I doubt I can get it that low. It is currently in a 55F water bath so I will get some frozen water bottles in. How much lag should I expect?
EDIT: Found this from the website: “9-22°C (48.2-71.6°F) ideally 12-15°C (53.6-59°F)” so I am not too worried. Gonna try to get it down a couple of degrees…
Found another thread with the 18 day fermentation schedule with 24 days of lagering. I will try to follow this the best that I can. Thanks for the input.
I use this yeast a lot. I pitch cold 48 to 50F and let free rise to 54 till finished. just pitched a 3 gal batch of 1.050 and it finished in 9 days. Great yeast but does not like below 50. Takes up to 48 hrs to really see “signs” of fermentation mostly.
As Denny pointed out, you will not get lager-like flavors by starting fermentation out warm. During the first 72 hours is when the yeast make most of the fermentation characteristics that will be the flavor of the beer. If your fermenting warm, you won’t get the flavor characteristics you are looking for in a lager. It may not make a bad beer, but if your going to create ale-like esters in your lager, why not just stick with ale yeasts? That doesn’t make much sense, now, does it?
For my lager schedule I start out at 48 before I pitch yeast. Aerate twice as long as ales (I prefer pure o2) pitch twice as much yeast, and let fermentation kick into high krausen at those cold temps. After about 72-96 hours you might decide to bump the temp up 2 degrees, and continue doing so every 24 hours until you get up to 56-58 degrees and let the fermentation slowly finish up. When signs of fermentation seriously start to slow down you could even let the temp raise to 60-62 to really let the beer finish cleaning itself up. Wait a few days around the 58-62 degree mark after fermentation has mostly stopped, then you can crash down to 32-34 degrees and lager for at least 1-2 weeks.
For low gravity lagers, you really only need a couple of weeks lagering time as long as you had a healthy fermentation, pitched at proper temps and got a good d-rest, etc.
Yeah, I should say as cold as you can without freezing the beer. For me about 33 is as cold as I can get my conicals and BBTs. On the 12 gallon size batches I do that in a walk-in and it only gets down to about 38.
I am seeing airlock activity within 24 hours which surprises me. It is currently at 52F. Maybe I shouldn’t trust Fermentis but they say 53.6F - 59F is ideal for this strain. I am not worried that the temp dropped from pitching temp of 59 to 52 overnight. I am confident it will be a good beer.
My post was just meant as a guideline. You probably didn’t do any serious harm by pitching warm but understand that it is not ideal. Ideally you should cool all the way to fermentation temps before pitching.
Some of the dry strains do require a warmer ferment. The only dry strain I use any more is S-189 which can handle the colder temps. 52 is probably about right for that strain.
Yeah I just have a lot to learn. I didn’t realize pitching at 59 was too warm. I thought it might help it take off quicker and didn’t realize it would do more harm than good.
I learned this the hardway. There is a lot of misinformation on the internet. I got diacetyl the first few lagers I made. If you get diacetyl try krausening as fix. It works.
A friend in my club makes award winning lagers by starting fermentation at warmer temperatures before dropping to what normally people think of as lager fermentation temps.
I’ve had his beers and they show no signs of esters.
I don’t like to do this, but I can’t really argue with his success.
Yeah that seems counterintuitive to do that. I’ve tried a beer fermented like that and it was clean. The guy used 2124 which is pretty clean obviously. But I wouldn’t do it myself either.
I think the only real advantage would be faster fermentation start = less time time for wild yeast to take hold. I know some of the big yeast brands recommend this method, but I personally don’t do it either.