Brewing Ale with Lager yeast??

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beechwood

beechwood

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If i use a lager yeast say over winter because the temps are lower, but i don't cold condition it (lager it) for a month or two, like you would with a proper lager..... is it still classed as a lager or is it an ale.
Anyone tried doing this? and what's the resulting beer like. :hmm:
 
Well technically it'll be a lager, but it's not unusual to do this. A steam beer or california common is a lager which is fermented at ale temperatures and a kolsch is generally fermented with ale yeast at lager temperatures. These are known as hybrid beers and can be extremely good indeed.
 
Cheers steve, i'm going to experiment over winter. Will post my results in due course

Cheers:thumb:
 
Glad you raised the subject Beechwood - without getting too bogged down with BJCP guidelines of styles would it make a "not a kick in the baws off" an IPL - like Cesar Augustus?

I had a similar idea when I was about to bottle my Coopers Euro Lager, so saved the yeast cake (3 packets of S-23) with a litre of the beer and pitched it into my last remaining stocks of bargain kits - both Coopers Canandian Blonde (with Saaz, Styrian Savijnski (sp) Tettnang and Mittlefruh 15 and 5 min additions) expecting that to be very lagerish and my own take of their "Fruit Salad" with Original Series Draught (Amarillo, Cascade, Citra and Styrian Goldings) same aroma/flavour additions. Will be removing from the fridge for bottling mid November.

All the best with your experiment.
 
I started a similar thread (but no one replied :-() but in it I said that I often get better results with lager yeast than ale yeast. I've made hoppy lagers which have really punchy and full on hop characters, and my stouts made with lager yeasts come out with a lot more flavour than with any English ale yeast I've used yet.

I usually use S-23 for my lager yeast but W-34/70 also works really well for me, both are Fermentis dried sachets. I have a bottle of And Union Unfiltered Lager I'm gonna try and culture up the yeast from that and see if it's just as good.
 
jceg316 said:
I started a similar thread (but no one replied :-() but in it I said that I often get better results with lager yeast than ale yeast. I've made hoppy lagers which have really punchy and full on hop characters, and my stouts made with lager yeasts come out with a lot more flavour than with any English ale yeast I've used yet.

I usually use S-23 for my lager yeast but W-34/70 also works really well for me, both are Fermentis dried sachets. I have a bottle of And Union Unfiltered Lager I'm gonna try and culture up the yeast from that and see if it's just as good.
Click to expand...

Cheers for that, very interesting. Do you normally condition them like you would a lager and at what kind of temp? :smile:
 
No worries!

I have done both. The coolest I've fermented those beers at though is 13°C, so I guess a bit warmer than lager temperatures, but have tried making a steam beer/Cali common type and got very similar, if not the same results. I have also left my lager fermenting in my garage where it gets very cool at night, probably down to lager temps but warms up to around 15°C during the day, it came out really well then too. I don't leave them for 3 months to lager, but I do have a longer than normal primary to get rid of the sulphur smell. Probably a week longer than an ale equivalent recipe.

I like to leave them to condition in the bottle for different times. Hoppy lagers I crack open about 2-3 weeks, there are usually a few noticeable "green" flavours at 2 weeks but the hop character is amazing! At the 3 week mark I find the flavours have matured nicely, still with a very clean and punchy hop character. With my more traditional pils, helles, bocks etc I leave them in the bottle longer. Usually start to drink them around 3-4 week mark out of impatience, but if I wait longer they would taste nicer.

basically most conditioning happens in the bottle, and it probably needs a slightly longer fermentation.
 
jceg316 said:
No worries!

I have done both. The coolest I've fermented those beers at though is 13°C, so I guess a bit warmer than lager temperatures, but have tried making a steam beer/Cali common type and got very similar, if not the same results. I have also left my lager fermenting in my garage where it gets very cool at night, probably down to lager temps but warms up to around 15°C during the day, it came out really well then too. I don't leave them for 3 months to lager, but I do have a longer than normal primary to get rid of the sulphur smell. Probably a week longer than an ale equivalent recipe.

I like to leave them to condition in the bottle for different times. Hoppy lagers I crack open about 2-3 weeks, there are usually a few noticeable "green" flavours at 2 weeks but the hop character is amazing! At the 3 week mark I find the flavours have matured nicely, still with a very clean and punchy hop character. With my more traditional pils, helles, bocks etc I leave them in the bottle longer. Usually start to drink them around 3-4 week mark out of impatience, but if I wait longer they would taste nicer.

basically most conditioning happens in the bottle, and it probably needs a slightly longer fermentation.
Click to expand...
Thats some brill info, cheers :thumb:
 
Making a lager consists of two phases.

Cold fermentation - This basically creates the clean taste to get with a lager. As it's fermented cold very little to no esters are produced by the yeast

Cold Conditioning (lagering) - This basically creates the smooth crispness you get with a lager.

For a proper lager both phases are employed but you can do either or both for many styles of beer. As mentioned you can get hybrid beers; kolshes, alt beers, steam beers, baltic porters pseudo lagers

You dont necessarly have to lager (cold condition) for weeks on end either, a couple of weeks with have an effect
 
so about 6-7 weeks later and I've bottled the first of two lager brews. i did a 10lts smoked amber lager and a 20lts American amber lager. I bottled up the smoked amber lager last night and am really pleased with the way its turned out so far, no smell of sulphur and considering its an extract brew very little if any of that 'twang' and a nice background smokieness.. couldn't keep any lower than about 15c as i don't have a brew fridge, will condition it for a few weeks and try and get some of them in the fridge for a couple of weeks before trying.
Added most of the extract a late addition to get the bitterness i wanted from the low alpha hops i used (shevinski goldings 1%AA)
time will tell i guess, hope to bottle up the other week after next. :thumb::whistle:
 

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