Lager, Kits and Carbonation - New Brewer Queries!

Good afternoon all,

This forum has been very helpful to me so far, I was hoping for more world advice to come my way!

Lager Kits, Clearing the Brew and Carbonation.

Ok. Having done a few kit brews so far, the current focus for myself is getting the brew looking clearer and fizzing it up. Having done a fair bit of research on lagers and what makes them the way they are, I was wondering if these methods could be translated to a kit brew. My questions:

Lets assume we have a "standard" kit. Warm Water + Extract, Fill with cold water, ferment, Prime, Rack. I say "standard", the kits I have had so far really haven't strayed too far away from this set of instructions.

If I had a generic lager kit. After fermentation is complete I place it into a secondary for X weeks, lets just say 6. If I were to then batch prime, rack, and place into the warm for a week before again chilling, would this:

- Give me a clear brew (Lagering in Secondary), Good Carbonation (Batch Priming and placing into warm) and therefore a classic "Lager?"
- Give me a clear brew (Lagering in secondary), No Carbonation (Yeast is now completely dead from lager) and therefore a flat lager?

If I were batch prime straight from fermentation (using another vessel), placing it in the warm for a week and then in the fridge, would this give me the desired effect just with my yeast cake at the bottom of the bottle as opposed to the above where I would attempt to leave most of it in the secondary?


This bit has been quite unclear to me and im determined to get it right. I just cant quite get my head around it at the mo. I understand the correct process for lagering an AG brew however I didn't know whether I could apply this to a kit brew (that being, FV -> Secondary -> Lager -> Prime -> Rack).

Thanks for any help offered!

D

From my understanding your brew wouldn't be a true lager unless fermented at low temperatures with a lager yeast. However the method you described above would give you a carbonated and quite clear beer.


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1. Whatever you do before, primary, secondary, racking etc etc, you only prime immediately before you package your beer. If you add sugar then leave it for longer than a few hours at most the yeast will consume the priming sugar and the CO2 generated will be lost to the carbonation process and the beer will be that much less carbonated.
2. In general terms the longer you leave your beer before you package it the clearer it will be, given that some yeasts settle better than others. If you rack off the trub that will help. Cold temperatures also help since the yeast goes dormant and settles out. If you package 'clear' beer there will be enough yeast to carbonate, but it will take longer than 'not-so-clear' beer. However if you leave beer months before packaging there is unlikely to be enough yeast left in suspension to carbonate.
Others may be able to help on the impact of 'lagering' on kit beer. My understanding is that it takes several weeks at very low temperatures, so without refrigeration you cannot 'lager' anything.

Lager yeast ferment at cooler temps and lagering just means to store, fermenting cool and storing in the cold means much of the compounds that give off flavours are not produced and those that are dissipate whilst lagering, so use a lager yeast ferment cool and then leave for two or three weeks before priming and bottling/kegging, then give a week or two at a few degrees warmer to carb up, then move to cold for a few months to lager.