Lager Lager Lager

Yesterday I did a bit of a spontaneous brew with some stuff I had in the house. Decided to try my hand at a lager and make the most of the cold Speyside nights. I used Saflager S23 yeast and it's been doing it's thing in the FV for about a day now. I have managed to find a place in the house to keep it at the recommended 12degrees C. From what I've read it should take 2 to 3 weeks to finish fermenting.

After that it's the weeks of cold storage or lagering that make it a lager. What I normally do is transfer the brew to a 2nd fv, add in a sugar syrup mix to batch prime then bottle straight away to ensure good carbonation. Have done this a few times now and it has always worked out pretty well.

I have read few different things about doing this with lager and there seems to be differing advice on which way to do it. I found a long and very detailed article on lager that sets out the two possible ways. On the lagering/bottle conditioning section it sets out the following:

lagers and bottle conditioning

When bottle conditioning lager beer, there are 2 options for the brewer:

bottle the beer after the primary fermentation and maturation is complete and cold condition the beer in the bottle

bottle the beer after cold conditioning is complete

Both have their pros and cons

bottle conditioning before cold conditioning

When you bottle condition before cold conditioning, you wait until the beer has completed fermentation and prime the beer with corn sugar or DME. Since the yeast is still fairly healthy and active there shouldn't be any problems in getting the beer carbonated. Let the beer carbonate at room temperature for a week. Give it a taste to ensure complete carbonation before moving it to cold storage 32 - 42 *F (0 - 5 *C) to cold condition it.

Because the beer is bottled before cold conditioning, all the yeast and other sediment that settles out during that phase will remain in the bottle.

bottle conditioning after cold conditioning

If you plan to bottle after cold conditioning, as suggested in Noonan's Book "New Brewing Lager Beer", you lager the beer in a carboy first (since you are bottling I’m assuming that you don’t have kegs for cold conditioning). This may take 4 weeks to a few months depending on the beer. Because the yeast has been inactive for such a long time and only little yeast is in suspension anyway, it is recommended to add fresh yeast at bottling time to ensure consistent carbonation in a reasonable time frame. The fresh yeast can come from either dry yeast (1/4 pack should be enough), yeast sediment from the primary fermenter of another batch or Kraeusen. The type of yeast doesn't matter much since the flavor has already been defined during the fermentation and cold conditioning process. Any clean well flocculating ale or lager yeast will do.

When racking from the cold conditioning vessel to the bottling bucket make sure that as little sediment as possible is transferred since the advantage of this method is to leave all this behind and have the beer benefit from bulk-aging.

So I'm wondering does anyone have any thoughts on the above - success, failures, pitfalls etc. Have you done one versus the other, or tried both? Would be interested to hear your experiences.

Cheers

The great home brew adventure.

I started homebrewing last year –its not something I had really thought about much before but after speaking to a few folk who had done it I decided I wanted to give it a go. I had absolutely no interest in getting a “just add water” kit like the ones you get in tesco but didnt fancy going the whole hog with all the equipment and learning curve needed for all grain.

So I ended up going for something in between. I found brewuk's recipe packs. They basically consist of packs of malt extract, hops, yeast and instructions. I liked the fact that it was a recipe and if I wanted more hops or different yeast it was just a case of ordering some more and changing the recipe.

The first one I did was their “rocker apa” - light malt extract plus cascade and nelson sauvin hops. I went for half a batch to begin with which resulted in just under 10 litres. It took quite a while to start fermenting – was a good few days before any signs of life. Took about a month for it to finish fermenting and I bottled it with mixture of 2litre coke bottles and wine bottles. I had a few sneaky tastes over the next few weeks and it was definitely improving. After a few weeks in bottles it was probably at its best. It was cloudy – looked like a blue moon, it smelled amazingly hoppy, had a bit of a strange after taste to it but on the whole was quite drinkable.

My next brew was their “Amarillo” recipe pack – pretty similar to the rocker but with Amarillo hops. This brew seemed to go a lot better – it started fermenting within a few hours and finished quite a bit quicker. I had now invested in a capper plus crown caps and had been hoarding glass bottles for weeks. Almost had enough to do the full batch but a few wine bottles were needed too. I patiently waited for a few weeks then cracked one open. It was amazing. Not cloudy, nice level of carbonation, nice head, amazing hop smell and a fantastic taste. The timing of it was perfect – just in time for Christmas and new year. Plenty of people got them for presents and plenty of others got to try it at the house over the festive period. Giving them to people gave me the excuse to do some nice labels for the bottles – with some folk not even realising they were home made. Having them in bottles with the proper caps really adds something to them – its a great feeling hearing that noise and pouring it out whilst thinking “I made that”.

I've worked my way through the batch and there are now only 8 bottles left – what I've found interesting is they are all slightly different, all with a slightly different character. There hasn't really been a bad one but there are some that are so much better. This has made me appreciate well made beer that is consistent and how hard it must be to do it from batch to batch as well as bottle to bottle.

So now my 3^rd brew is sitting in the fv with a nice thick Krausen head. This time I decided to brew to my own recipe wth a little help from beer engine. I love hoppy bitter west coast US beers and wanted something with a bit more kick than my first 2 attempts. So played about with Beer Engine to come up with a 7% beer that should if I've done it all right come in at around 70 IBUS. I had a few bits and pieces left over from 1^st half batch but ordered some more malt extract, cascade hops and US-05 yeast. Maybe it will be a disaster but I'm excited about how it will turn out and its all a learning curve.

Here is the recipe if anyone is interested

Hop Variety	Type	Alpha	Time	lb: oz	grams	Ratio
Cascade	Whole	6.8 %	60 mins	0 lbs. 2.1 oz	60 grams	48%
Cascade	Whole	6.8 %	15 mins	0 lbs. 0.7 oz	20 grams	16%
Cascade	Whole	6.8 %	5 mins	0 lbs. 0.7 oz	20 grams	16%
Cascade	Whole	5.7 %	60 mins	0 lbs. 0.9 oz	25 grams	20%

(ended up with two varities of cascade - 2011 @ 6.8% and another at 5.7%)

Final Volume:	18	Litres
Original Gravity:	1.068
Final Gravity:	1.015
Alcohol Content:	7%	ABV
Bitterness:	70	EBU
Colour:	19	EBC

– just don't tell me it won't work!