Wow, primary then 8 days chilling will work for a lager without tasting too green? Maybe you have found the Holy Grail of brewing! I don’t think my lager beers are done until at least 6 weeks and 4 of those are in primary.
Best of luck - I hope to be able to buy some of your beer some day.
Just depends on the beer but most 1.050 lagers don’t taste green at all after, say 10-14 days of fermentation (or until it is done) and 1-2 weeks of lagering at close to 30 degrees. Lagers do take longer to ferment and the lagering period is important but there’s no reason to lager a Helles or Kolsch for 4+ weeks.
If your fermentation takes 4 week you probably should be pitching more yeast or aerating more thoroughly, but most likely you are just not in a hurry which is one of the luxuries of homebrewing. Commercial breweries can’t take that type of luxury, they need to move beer as quickly through fermentors and BBTs as possible.
Thanks for the article.
It is great to see these “Micro” success stories !
I wish them all Luck.
Dan
I should have elaborated. I repitch yeast (with nutruent added typically), so I am always pitching enough fresh yeast for fermentation to complete in about 10 days or so at those temperatures (I aerate for about 5 minutes with a wine degasser on a cordless drill). But I like to give the yeast time to clean up after the work is done, so I just push it out to 4 weeks as a matter of scheduling, typically (one 10 gallon batch every other week works in the summer); occasionally I will rack to keg after as little as 3 weeks, if I need to get into the fermenter with a new batch. I only have one chest freezer with an external thermostat and an internal heater on a separate thermostat to maintain proper primary range, so it is during the winter that I can expedite the process a little by allowing a primary to sit in the garage at near freezing temperatures. I may try pushing these time limits as the consumption rate of my crew of able-bodied guzzlers typically outstrips this current arrangement and I don’t want to build a walk in freezer to ramp up the available cold space for warmer months. Yes, I have a lot of friends who really like lager homebrews, but settle for ales in the between times.
Cheers.