Is there a standard time for lagering an O-Fest beer? Any official guidelines?
March to September? Just kidding…
Until it’s done.
The traditional lore is that it takes many weeks or months of lagering, but there are homebrewers who are making “fast lagers” in much less time. It is up to you which approach you want to take, or anything in between.
Not just homebrewers, the Germans themselves. The “March” or “Summer” beer process was dictated by the lack of refrigeration and a local Bavarian prohibition (rescinded ~1851) against brewing between April and September. The rest of the year, a process virtually identical to the modern “fast” process was used. I lager all my beers for 6-7 weeks. Which is well over 3 times the length of lagering modern German brewers typically employ.
Short answer: lager as long as it takes to clarify the beer. After that, it’s not ageing, it’s just getting old and staling.
I usually Lager my Oktoberfest for about 30 [+/-] days, then I crash it for a few days. Works very well.
You would be correct. During our tour of the Spaten Brewery (Munich) last month, they explained that beer was not brewed during these months as they needed the grains for food. The breweries used so much barley that it actually caused a shortage for regular food products.
Also, the real reason for the annual party (Oktoberfest) was many breweries had old beer leftover from the spring, and they wanted to get rid of it to make room for more brewing. So what did they do? They had a beer party!
As to lack of refrigeration, the brewers had many deep underground cellars, or “caves”. They would harvest ice from the nearby frozen rivers and lakes, and place that in their deep cellars. The ice would last most of the summer.
Note that American brewers (Yuengling) did the same thing with regards to harvesting ice during the winter months, prior to refrigeration.
2 weeks
I have a 7-8 week pipeline grain to glass. All my beers follow the same timeline post fermentation regardless of Ale or Lager.
1-2 wks ferment > Keg > 2 wks cold crash/carbonate in freezer side of side-by-side > move to serving side > 2 wks ‘on deck’ to finish carbonating/clearing in the serving side > tap > 2 wks serve.
So, they all get a month to lager/condition/mature/whatever. I do that so I don’t have to change the process for Ale vs Lager.
A number of recipes recommend a conditioning time of 30 to 60 days.
I’m sure they do. My experience with my beers tells me otherwise. There are very few hard rules anymore in my opinion…
If it’s the way you like it no reason to do anything else.
So true.
And therein lies the joy of brewing at home…the ability to break the rules, or make them up as you go!
Yup!
Age it until it tastes good.
That’s the only correct answer AFAIC.
The lager I just brewed and bottled less than 2 weeks ago already tastes awesome. I see zero reason to age it. But other times, when there is sulfur or diacetyl or odd esters present, aging can be very beneficial. I think a lot of this is yeast strain specific, also yeast health, temperatures, gravity, etc. Lots of variables. Hence, my advice above, and now below as well:
Age it until it tastes good.
I should clarify, I’m pretty much like BrewBama. I spund my beers, so they hit FG fully carbonated after about 7 days fermentation at normal fermentation temperatures. Flavor is fully developed at this point. The full 6-7 weeks lageri g is not necessarily needed to clarify the beer. It’s just an artifact of how my pipeline has evolved. When it’s full, that’s how long it takes for a keg to come on tap.
I actually brewed a Marzen style beer last March and didn’t get around to bottling it until September. Too many other chores got in the way. I have an old dirt floor cellar that never gets above 50, the carboy sat down there for the summer. Anyhow I was sure the beer was going to awful, but it was actually quite good.
Good for you…and your Marzen!
As Dave said, age (aka: lager) until the beer tastes good. I can tell you that different yeasts require differing time to lager and enhance their flavor. So there isn’t a single answer.
Commercial brewing perspective: For most of our lagers at Yellowhammer we ferment cold (48-52) raising the temp after 72 hours or so to higfh 50s. after about a week or 10 days do a force diacetyl test. When that passes cold crash for about 3 days and centrifuge. There isn’t really anything magical that is happening during an extended lagering period.