Hello, so I brewed a Munich Helles about 4 weeks ago, primary fermentation took 7 days at 51F, raised it over the course of 2 days to 58F and let sit for a day, then proceeded to drop it 2-3 degrees per day until it hit 34F and has been lagering at that temp for 2 weeks, I know lagers take time, but I pulled a sample just to see how it cleared so far, and it seems to have cleared a bit but still hazy and has tiny particles floating around, I am wondering if I should just leave it alone (that’s what my gut is telling me), or if I should at least do a closed transfer to the keg and lager it in the keg to get it off the yeast, is it normal to still have small particles floating around? Any tips would help!
Leave it.
Thank you for the reassurance!
Yeah, that’s not along timetable. What yeast?
Wyeast 2308 Munich. I made a 2L starter with it 2 days before, and before pitching it I set both in my fermentation fridge to equalise in temp and then pitched. Fermentation took off at about 14 hours
The sluggishness may have something to do with your starter method. You are essentially pitching dormant yeast. I prefer the SNS (Shaken Not Stirred method). There’s a lot of info about it here.
Also…
I will look at these thanks! Honestly I’m glad you said something I thought that lag time wasn’t too bad? What would you consider a good lag time?
I was looking at doing a lager or helles as one of my next brews, and if I remember right, the lager time for it was almost a month if not more. The recipe is boxed up with all the ingredients so I don’t have it right in front of me, but that is what I seem to remember
Ya and I have been reading that, I know a month is typical for lagering anyways, just weird to me that there is little floaties in it? Probably the size of a grain of sand, so visible but not tons of them, curious if that’s normal? This is my first lager actually so this may be normal
This is really interesting, I like many probably was under the assumption the stir plate is the best way, so went with what I was reading and seeing on YouTube. I may need to just try my next couple without a stir plate and see what my results are.
I used a stir plate for 15 years. 8 years ago I tried the SNS method and haven’t used a stir plate since.
Must have had great results to break that long of a habit! So not only no stir plate but a key to that is pitch at high krausen, I guess a lot of factors go into this but I suppose it would be possible to make the starter first thing in the morning before brewing, transferring wort into fermentation fridge and allowing it to reach temp and pitching the yeast that evening when it’s at its peak?
I do mine 24 hours in advance and get close enough to high krausen. Not sure I understand why you’d do the fridge.
Not for the yeast, I meant just to have the wort in the fridge, at fermentation temperature, after brewing and leaving it in there to pitch the yeast once it has got to or close to krausen. 24 hours probably makes more sense, it probably takes longer to attenuate doing sns than it does the stir plate? Or am I wrong there
No it doesn’t take any longer to attenuate, and the idea is that you don’t really want it to, anyway.
Ya sorry for my use of the words, I was using attenuate as the attenuation process as a whole, not meaning to get to full attenuation but longer to attenuate to the point of high krausen. I thought the stir plate made it faster, but that’s probably part of the stir plate myth
Just wanted to follow up on this. Brewed a kolsch a few weeks ago, used the SNS method and after pitching had activity within hours, very active fermentation, it is just about finished up lagering but when I took a sample for gravity readings a few weeks back it smelled clean, tasted pretty nice. I will probably be sticking to this method. Stir Plate is overkill! Thanks for the advice
glad you had good results