Best Lager Kit and how to make it ?

[SPR]

I've made many of the traditional ale kits (mainly festival) with great success, but the only lager I made tasted like 'home brew'.

I spoke to my shop and they said the only way to make proper lager was making from scratch, with grain father or whatever, so I haven't made any since.

I just wondered what is/are the best kits, do they need fermenting cooler and do you change the yeasts or anything? And when made do they taste like fine commercial lager ? Or do they all tend to have the home brew taste?

 

[LarryF]

The Betterbrew Czech Pilsner has good write ups on the review section. It's a 2.1kg kit.

 

[terrym]

First, many lager kits come with an ale yeast (probably cost saving) so are fermented at ale yeast temperatures, not low teens lager yeast temps, although some people use Nottingham ale yeast which will go down to 15*C and then make a 'pseudo lager'. I think Wilko yeast is Nottingham. However if you ferment at lager yeast temperatures you will need more yeast compared to an ale yeast fermentation, that said some folks get away with the kit yeast alone.
As far as kits themselves why not look through the kit reviews
http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=61597
In particular Cooper European Lager generally gets good reviews http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17845 and it comes with a lager yeast but the recommendation is to brew at 21*C, which is a bit odd.
Based on that I have recently done one which I dry hopped with Saaz and which I have just moved to the fridge to condition/lager for a few weeks. I tried to brew with the kit yeast at 15*C but it tried to stall so I raised the temperature and it restarted and ended up at 1.007. If I do it again at lager yeast temps I will use more yeast.
The Festival New Zealand Pilsner has also caught my eye but I think that this comes with an ale yeast.
Finally any true lager must go through a period at low temperature to lager, so unless you have a fridge you cant do this stage. However many homebrewers do without this and so the value added may only be marginal at the kit homebrew level.