Hi everyone, like a lot of folks I suppose I rekindled my hobby of homebrewing during this COVID stay at home. Moved up from kits to extracts to all grain ales. Done about 14 batches or so and the ales are coming out pretty darn good.
I’ve been a bit reluctant to make the jump but I want to try a lager. I have a Stella Artois clone recipe I’m going to try. Up till now I’ve just used primary (plastic) but I’m going to get a glass secondary for this one. Plan is to primary in the plastic bucket, secondary in glass and then bottle as normal. Ferment at 50 degrees and do a diacetyl rest. Then bottle.
Make sure you pitch enough yeast. Lagers work best with approximately twice the amount of yeast you would normally use with ales. Start the fermentation out cold. If using liquid yeast be sure to aerate well. Aside from that it’s not that much different than ale.
(Edit: I agree no need to secondary - just lager on the yeast. If you do use a secondary purge it first with Co2 before racking.)
I agree with others- don’t secondary. The other thing to keep in mind is be very patient. Lager fermentations can take a lot longer and I’ve found that the longer you can keep the fermenter cold after fermentation is complete and after a diacetyl rest, the better the beer is. My last glass of Pilsener from the keg is always way better than the first. Don’t rush it.
My advice would be: don’t buy into the myths about lagering. It’s just cold-crashing. There is nothing mystical or magical about it.
It is true that temp control is important and that lagers take longer than ales, but they only need to take a few days longer to account for the slower fermentation at ~50 degrees for the first few days, until the krausen falls.
Don’t focus on pitch rate, but do pitch a LOT of healthy yeast–healthy being the operative word. Aerate well. A plastic bucket will work fine for primary and beyond. Don’t rack to a secondary.
I would not attempt a lager if you cannot control temp, oxygenate the wort, and pitch a crap-ton of healthy yeast. I’ve never tasted a good homebrewed lager without these three things being well controlled.
So I had brew day Saturday. Hit the OG well and managed to get the temp down to 55. Aerated the wort on the transfer with a lot of splashing into the bucket then pitched. I didn’t do a yeast starter (never done that) but I did use one of the larger packets of liquid yeast.
So by Wednesday, didn’t look like much had happened. Maybe a couple of little bubbles in the air lock. I have a bluetooth hydrometer and that hadn’t budged from 1052. On advice of the guys at the homebrew store I raised the temp to about 60-62. SG of course is a little lower because of temp effect but overnight still not much.
Should I re-pitch? Start again? Is everything normal?
let it ride, but in the future, either have enough liquid yeast to pitch, do a SNS starter (search this forum for the technique) or use two packets of dried yeast, 34/70 being the most common one chosen.
Like I said in my original post - you simply must pitch more yeast for a lager. It’s not something you can skimp on. You wouldn’t put half the amount of malt or hops or water in the recipe so why do that with yeast?
Raising the temp will work if you can’t pitch more yeast but you might get some ale like flavors by the time you get the fermentation cooled down so, in that case, you should have just brewed an ale. And sometimes lagers fermented at ale temps just don’t taste all that great, depending on the strain.
Making a starter is easy. It’s simply making a small batch of beer. If you can make a large batch of beer surely you can make a small batch. But the dry lager yeasts available today are so good that if you don’t want to mess with starters just pitch the proper amount of dry yeast and be done with it.
Do a search on “yeast pitching calculator” and use that as a guide on how much yeast you need to pitch for every batch.
+1 everything people are saying about yeast. 2 sachets of dry yeast is easiest, with an appropriate starter next (the current trend would be a half gallon SNS starter in a 1 gal apple juice/wine jug).
Additionally, you say you got it down to 55 degrees. Does that mean you got the wort down to 55 degrees fahrenheit and are fermenting at ambient in a 55F room? If so, that’s likely actually fermenting around 60F. Depending on the strain, it may still come out pretty good, but consider that fermentation temperature and ambient temperature are two different things. If you have a fermometer (liquid crystal thermometer sticker) on your bucket, that should give you a decent idea of the fermentation temperature.