http://www.ihomebrewsolutions.com/son-of-fermentation-chiller/
Now that’s a pretty cool solution too. Doesn’t look like itd be super costly either.
To everyone else with this discussion, I really appreciate all the input!
Thanks!
Interesting. I’ve always read Cali Common (aka Steam Beer) is a lager brewed at ale temps. I never thought to question these sources. Here are some examples:
“History: …Fermented with a lager yeast, but one that was selected to ferment relatively clean beer at warmer temperatures…”
http://beersmith.com/blog/2008/06/11/steam-beer-and-california-common-recipes-beer-styles/
“…it is a lager beer fermented at high temperatures (between 60-65F)…”
“…brewed with lager yeast without the use of true refrigeration[1]…”
https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/nevada/bre.htm
“The Carson Brewery made steam beer, a bottom-fermenting brew produced without the constant cold temperatures required by lagers.”
“Therefore, they created a brewing process that used a lager yeast (bottom fermentation), but fermented at ale (top fermentation) temperatures.”
wlp060 is what I am thinking about using for an Oktoberfest. My cold ferm chamber is full and I am going back to a swamp cooler days, should be fun. Although I can stay on top of my brew all day since I work from home.
Another happy guy with 3470 @ 60F. I am BJCP and you are gonna have to bring your A game to successfully ID the differences in beers made 10 degrees apart with this yeast. I think this is a huge game changer for homebrewers. No fridge and no starter but yet good beer. That said, I do think the 3470 needs fining. It did not flocc well at all even cold crashed for me.
I agree - if you aren’t equipped for an extended lagering period, then gelatin is your friend with 34/70.
So I will be doing a BIAB for the recipe I listed in the first post and it uses irish moss. I have seen a lot more people using gelatin as opposed to irish moss. Is there any significant difference?
Also, this will be my first BIAB and I am wondering how much I should be using for my starting water. I have seen a lot of people use 6.5 when doing BIAB for a 5 gal batch. Does that seem about right? Also I have seen some people sparge when doing BIAB. Should you sparge to increase your efficiency when doing BIAB if you have a way of doing that? Such as a turkey frier with the bag attached to the fry basket?
I have not yet attempted a BIAB batch, so I can’t assist on that one.
But as for gelatin vs irish moss/whirlfloc tablets, gelatin is a post-fermentation fining agent that is used to help drop out yeast in suspension. It is typically added to a cold beer prior to packaging.
Irish moss/whirlfloc is a kettle fining agent that is added during the last 15 minutes (or so) of the boil to help clarify the wort when it is cooled prior to pitching your yeast.
Gelatin - post fermentation fining
Irish moss - kettle fining
Difference between Irish moss and gelatin: Gelatin works. Irish moss doesn’t always work. That’s my experience.
Grains soak up 0.1 gallons per pound, so account for the amount of grains when calculating water. And then of course you’ll probably be boiling off a gallon if you boil for 60-75 minutes, so add a gallon for that. Then if you want to leave any sediment behind from the grains or cold break, add a quart or two for that. You might need 6.5 gallons, might need 7 gallons – it’s all up to you and your own experience. You’ll have to play around for a couple of batches to find out all your own adjustments to use.
Yes, I am an advocate for sparging with BIAB to improve efficiency. There’s two ways of sparging BIAB that I have experience with:
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The simple dunk sparge. You need a separate kettle to heat up sparge water, and then either dunk the heavy grain bag into that kettle if it’s big enough (probably not) or pour the hot water into a 6-gallon bucket and dunk that way, then mix all the wort back together into the main kettle.
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The colander/basket sparge. Still requires a second kettle for heating up sparge water. From there you essentially have to place your grain bag into the colander or basket over yet another bucket and or drain the hot sparge water over it. This method can be effective but is very very slow, and for that reason I don’t do it much anymore. Dunking is easy.
With these methods and a good crush, you can achieve 85-90% or even higher efficiency. However, I’m also not an advocate for that either. Sometimes, good enough really is good enough. If your efficiency without a sparge is 75% or more, it might be best just to skip the sparge altogether, seriously. I sparge nowadays for the biggest gravity beers, but for smaller beers (<1.055 or so) I usually skip it because you can get great efficiency just from draining the bag and moving on.
Enjoy.
If your ambient air is cool enough (maybe not so easy this time of year) I’ve found it’s easier just to put the fermenter in a rubbermaid tub filled with water and add frozen 1 liter ice bottles. I cover it with pink foam insulation, but if you could wrap it with that stuff it would work even better. Low tech, but it works. Better yet would be a cooler that fits a carboy.
If you can ferment WY1007 at 60 degrees (72 hours is all you really need to keep the temp that low, the first 3 days of active fermentation) and then keep it cold (below 45 degrees) you will hardly be able to distinguish that yeast from a lager. I do agree that 2124/830/34-70 @ 60F. can work well, many commercial breweries that brew lagers use that lager strain as their “ale” strain at that temp. But nothing beats WY1007 as a lager like beer.
This was super helpful! Thanks!
With regards to BIAB, I used a bag in my 10 gallon cooler/mash tun for the last several brews and intend to continue doing due to the results. The bag I’m using is claimed to be able to handle 100 lbs. of grain and water, I believe it probably can. With the bag I find I can get away with a slightly finer crush of the grain which seems to result in reduced mash times and increased yield, and still have fairly fast runoff. I do batch sparge. The last batch the SG of the initial runoff was 1.071 and the sparge was 1.031 so I guess you decide whether or not you want to recover that extra stuff. With the bag I am able to recover more wort than I could with either the cooler mash tun alone, or mashing in my G2 with a false bottom, and the whole process is much easier. When I’m done I simply take the bag out to the compost pile and dump it.
As for increasing the volume of the batch, if you don’t adjust your ingredient list accordingly your OG will obviously be lower than it otherwise would be.
Hope this helps.
I have a few and they work great. They are water tight so submersion is possible but I’ve found very little temperature fluctuation with just exchanging 1L ice bottles once or twice per day and no water.
Before I could do lagers I did a mocktoberfest using US05. It may have not be ‘lager-like’ per se but it was still clean, damn good, and tasted very German to me. If it was me, I would just go with what is the easiest and least stressful for you out of the options presented. Sometimes it’s better to go the path of least resistance instead of worrying about the semantics of a style. In short, a good ocktoberfest recipe with ale yeast will still be very tasty.
Are there any significant differences in recipes titled (M)oktoberfest and Oktoberbfest other than the yeast?
I was thinking about picking one of several Oktoberfest recipes from back issues of BYO and substituting either WY1007 or WLP810 for the yeast in the magazine recipe.
Comments please and thanks in advance for your answers.
I have brewed (M)Oktoberfest using the same recipe and substituting nothing but the yeast. It turns out great. YMMV. Cheers!
[quote=“Lazy Ant Brewing, post:36, topic:23571, username:Lazy_Ant_Brewing”]
Are there any significant differences in recipes titled (M)oktoberfest and Oktoberbfest other than the yeast?
[/quote]
No, the defining difference is lager vs ale yeast. The grist, IBU etc., would be the same.
So the brew day was successful! Everything went well for my first BIAB. I ended up following brulosophys (m)Oktoberfest recipe.
The beer has been churning away since last wed (so 9 days now) and it is still bubbling very very slowly! After 5 days, the gravity had dropped to about 1.022 and was going very slowly. I removed it from the ice/ swamp cooler (which first couple days was around 58-60f, and stayed around 60-63f for another couple days) and let it free rise to room temp (around 72f).
This thing is STILL bubbling after 4 more days of room temp. FG seems fairly stable at 1.020 which, goal was 1.015. Should I let it keep churning away at room temp or have I left it too long already? Should I just cold crash and bottle? 1.020 seems OK for this style and from what I know, a .005 difference is not a large difference in taste.
Thanks again for all your help with this first BIAB! I appreciate everyones input.
P.S. - yeast was WLP029
EDIT: I used a 1L starter for this yeast as well. fermented it for about 3.5-4 days till it slowed down and cold crashed for 1.5-2 days. No krausen on the starter or in the actual carboy , but there was a great yeast cake at the bottom of the starter and carboy. I decanted about half of the beer off the starter after cold crashing it and pitched the rest after rewarming it up to pitching temp.
Let it go until it is finished. More time won’t hurt it.
If it’s still dropping its not done.