Beer club has a LAGER brew coming up. Lacking a temp control unit, has anybody lagered by alternating in and out of refrigeration as a means of temp control?
Yeah, it’s a pain and you can’t really keep a steady temp. You may be better off fermenting at room temperature, then lagering.
i only have pretty stable basement/garage on huge concrete blocks for insulation. but if its unexpectedly warm come say april or may and i had a lager planned IMHO your best bet is to prepare a large tub and keep it filled with temp you want ie. ~50F water and ice for at least the first few days then just leave it alone and let it rise. its not much labour
You can fashion a fermenter chest out of insulation and use frozen water bottles in that to keep it fairly cool. They also sell fermenter bags:
https://search.yahoo.com/search?p=cool+brewing+insulated+fermentation+bag&fr=ipad
Not as consistent as a refrigerator, but i find it effective for the few days at the start of fermentation….
Moving the fermenter in and out of a refrigerator implies that you have a refrigerator that your fermenter fits in. Why not leave it in? If you pitch plenty of yeast, the mid forties F temp would work well for a lager.
28 bucks! If you can’t afford 28 bucks you probably should’t be brewing! 
that is a hell of a deal, even tho its only got ~5 hours left. i am considering right now if i might buy this and buy the fridge later. thats crazy.
edit: LOL i just checked on amazon.ca and .com and its only 2 dollars cheaper after all the conversion and import charges than if i just bought it at normal price at amazon.ca
anyway americans BUY THIS
I have a few ink birds that I use to control a few different projects – one os for keeping plants warm during the winter. They work great, hot or cold. And they are cheap.
A lot of work for not great control. Can you regulate that overnight?
When I started brewing in Texas I tried to maintain temperature in sort of the same way by putting the vessel in a larger tub of water and swap out ice packs and frozen water bottles. Worked fine when I was home and awake but no control at all while at work or overnight. Even trying to brew early Saturday so I could be present for the first two days of fermentation didn’t always work well.
Unless you keep the fridge on the bottom end of its temperature range it would be way easier and likely make a better beer to select a strain comfortable fermenting at the fridge temperatures. Plenty of lager yeasts will work at those temperatures, especially if you treat them nicely and give them enough time.
If you can get a used chest freezer and an ink bird, then you can really control the temperatures properly.
Lutra would be a good option for brewing a lager at room temp. I like describing Lutra as a lager strain with training wheels - Traditional lager strains can throw off rotten egg sulfur notes when fermented warm … where as Lutra can give off a more citrus note when fermented warm. It may not be what you would want in a lager, but would still give you a drinkable beer.
i tried the dried lutra last summer in 2 beers and really did not like it, the “citrus” elements, or fruitiness honestly reminded me of an english ale strain (reduced intensity of these esters, but there and distracting) but it ended up much tarter than i expected and very dry feeling. it might be good but i feel you’d have to change a lot of variables in grist, pH, hopping etc to make it work. im off kveik for the foreseeable future after that. i dumped both the remainders of the beers
I really wanted to like kveik yeasts. They seemed like such a nice solution to temperature control, but I have been quite disappointed in the results the few times I have used them.
This. I find that lager yeasts ferment cleanly and deliciously in the 60s Fahrenheit, almost room temperature. If tasted blind, I don’t know that I’d be able to taste a difference compared to one fermented cold.
And this. Results seem to vary too damn much with high temperature fermentations. And the slightest contamination will be amplified. My club did a competition where we all used the same Lutra yeast, and results were all over the board as far as fruity esters and off flavors. When it came time to vote for which one I thought was the best, it was like voting in a political election, trying to select the lesser of evils.
I also tried the large tub of water and frozen water bottles. I had a fermometer on the bucket fermenter. I found that condensation formed on the fermometer and it was ruined. They’re water resistant but not water-proof. So if you try this method, I suggest using some other method of checking temperature.
I’m with you. I have yet to taste a kveik I really like.