I brewed my first lager before leaving town a bit back. on the 12th. It’s still bubbling well in my plastic buckets, getting about 8-10 bubbles per minute. I have good temperature control. So, my questions…
According to Palmer, I should transfer when it hits one to four bubbles per minute or 3/4 of gravity reduction. Well, I’m at that 3/4 reduction, but like I said, it’s still pretty active. So which numbers takes priority?
Second question is once transferred and I’ve hit final gravity, do I just reduce temperature and lager, or do I keg and lager, or do I keg, carbonate and lager? I ain’t gonna bottle.
Well, I usually just wait until it’s 3/4 done and then bump it up 10 degrees for a D-Rest, whether it needs it or not, and let it finish out. Then transfer to the keg on the gas in the serving keezer and let it lager until it’s ready.
But I’ve seen advice to ferment at say 50F until it’s close to done, then transfer and let it lager at 40F or so for an extended period of time to finish fermenting.
Not sure what the best answer is there but the way I’ve been doing it has produced some tasty lagers.
Bubble timing is too misleading, I would trust the gravity and go from there. I would raise the temp for a d-rest like tygo says. When it hits final gravity, I would crash cool, keg, and carb/lager it.
Tank space is golden. Lagers tie up the tanks. So… ales.
I have bought many more cornies and a chest freezer with temp. control to do lagers right. Extrapilate to a production brewery and that is a big investment.
I like to do a D-rest at 60F for most of my lagers. Raise the temp slowly and let it sit at 60F for 5-7 days and look for 2-3 days of consistent gravity readings, then slowly reduce the temp to 40 for another week or two, then keg. At that point you are ready to chill down to lagering temps and lager for 4-12 weeks.
Well, I was at 50 degrees, but set that to 60 as I left the house this morning, My probe is taped to the side of one bucket with some insulation. Probably raise a bit quickly given your statement above.
Hard as I may try, I doubt I can wait three months… LOL
The idea would be to get a more accurate reading of the temperature of the wort in the bucket instead of just the air temperature in the fermentation chamber. They can be quite different.
I can understand if it’s just a temperature probe to display the temperature, but I would not connect the fridge temperature probe to the bucket or immerse it in liquid.
Fridges and their compressors aren’t designed to cool liquids or solids. They are designed to maintain the ambient temperature of the air in the fridge. The reasoning behind this is that it takes less energy to cool the air instead of the objects in the fridge. As long as the fridge maintains the temperature of the air, the objects in the fridge will maintain their temperature.
If you put the probe in the liquid, the air temperature will continue to rise and the compressor won’t turn on until the temperature of the liquid triggers it. Then it will take more energy to cool the liquid by using the air. The compressor will run longer. Additionally, the fridge isn’t directly cooling the liquid. If you were using something like a glycol wrap around the bucket or fermenter, then you’d want to measure the temperature of the liquid (and you’d want to measure the temperature of the glycol to determine when the thermal transfer was complete).
So by using the temperature of the liquid to control the fridge compressor, you’re running the compressor longer and using more energy to cool the fermenting beer.
