Brewing first lager tomorrow...am unprepared!!

[hoppyscotty]

This lagering thing seems a bit complicated. Alot of varying advice around the place. Its an all grain kit from the Malt Miller - an intensely hopped lager. It uses the Mangroves Jacks M84 Bohemian lager yeast.

Firstly it says to start fermentation at 10 - 15 degrees C according to the MJ website so I assume I need to chill the wort as much as I can post boil and cool in the fridge until it reaches 10 degrees before pitching yeast? This wont take too long as I have a good fridge for my fermentation cabinet with a fast chill function but will still take an hour or two.

Then ferment at this temperature until FG is reached and stabalised. Then warm up to around 14 legs C for Diacetyl rest for a few days before reducing temperature a couple of degrees a day down to -1 deg C for 4 - 12 weeks (a bit of a wide range - maybe aim for 8 weeks?) before packaging into bottles in my case.

Assuming this process is fine then not sure when to dry hop. Some advice I've read says dry hop during the Diacetyl rest period when the temp is highest. But I don't want the hops to sit in the been too long - I'll use a hop tube and remove after 3 days probably just as I'm chilling for the layering process following the Diacetyl rest.

Am I on the right tracks? The Malt Miller recipe instructions are a bit vague....a bit like those recipes challenges you see on The Great British Bake Off! Lots of room for interpretation. Thanks.

 

[RichardM]

I've never dry hopped a lager so can't say a lot about that but your outlines sounds about right to me.

 

[hoppyscotty]

Thanks. At least I've got the headline schedule there or thereabouts. The instructions say not to dry hop longer than 72hrs before transferring into 'final vessel'. Not sure if they mean a secondary fermenter or into keg or bottle. I've only got one fermenter so only single vessel for the whole process, so I'll aim to dry hop 72hrs before bottling and use a hop tube so I can remove if needed if I'm going to extend over 72hrs.

 

[RoomWithABrew]

Regarding temperature I saw this advice and it is seasoned from aussie forum credit MHB.
Lager brewing is technically demanding and I think the best time to ask the sort of questions you have is before you start, it’s called planning and goes a long way to de-stressing the whole process.


I find this very helpful, the old picture being worth a thousand words thing, its out of Kunze (the bible for lager brewing) and is one of many ways to make Lager but it’s the oldest, simplest and probably the fermentation profile closest to what home brewers can do easily at home.

The Dark solid line is Temperature (left hand scale oC)
The Dashed line is gravity in Plato (left hand scale %W/W)
The Light solid line is VDK or Diacetyl (right hand scale mg/L)
The Arrows are where Trub is or dumped (bottom scale is days)

Couple of things to note: -
Warm Fermentation; note that it is kept under 12oC and that the yeast is pitched colder at 8oC. Think lots of healthy yeast! A Diacetyl rest is a remedial process to fix excess DA it need not be part of your plan and won’t be necessary if you do everything else right.
This is for a CCV, (Cylendro Chonical Vessel) which makes dumping trub easy, in flat fermenters you might need to work around the trub dumps some.
21 Days isn’t necessarily the only end point 21 days is sort of a minimum for a light lager, bigger beers and more complex/underpitched lagers might take a lot longer.

Back to your questions
Lagering in the old days was called also "Chill Proofing" most beers when cooled down get cloudy, this is called "Chill Haze" if you cool the beer down until haze forms then wait, the haze particles will fall to the bottom.
The closer you are to the freezing point of the beer (~-1.5oC) the more and the faster the haze will form and sink to the bottom.
If you let the beer warm back up, the haze matter will go back into solution (well most of it will).
If you rack the beer while its cold, or dump the trub (CCV) made of haze matter and yeast, when the beer warms up, the haze forming matter is gone. So will be most or nearly all of the yeast.
If you were kegging the beer you could easily force carbonate, if you want to bottle its going to mean adding more yeast, probably bulk priming with a bit of yeast is easiest.
Bottle the primed/yeasted beer allow it to warm up to a suitable temperature for the yeast to work (using lager yeast would be best so over 12oC). Wait until the beer is conditioned (fizzy) then store.
You could keep the bottles somewhere cool and dark and they will be fine for months. In a perfect world you would cool the beer to less than 5oC and keep it there until you drank it. One thing that harms lager is the temperature going up and down so cold and steady is optimum.

Have a think through it, if you have any more questions am happy to discuss.
If you are thinking of making another lager have a chat about your plan, happy to work through it with you. I suspect two trub dumps/racks will be a minimum.
Mark

Regarding dry hopping many options.

Recent Scott Janish article about cold dry hopping I did this for a pilsner at a couple of degrees, others suggest doing it at 14 celsius. You'll have time to make that decision though.

 

[hoppyscotty]

Wow, thanks. I'm fermenting in a Fermzilla 27ltr so can dump trub. I can follow the temp profile shown above. Will study more tomorrow.

 

[RoomWithABrew]

FWIW I pressure ferment with fermentasaurus, if you are pressure fermenting then you can throw most of those lager rules away.

I do most of my lagers at 35 celsius 15 - 35 psi, guys at local homebrew club meeting ( here in NZ so we're out and about as it used to be ) thought it was fantastic. Previous asahi clone done same profile.

If dry hopping I use bags and magnets on the inside of fermentasaurus, then you can lower hops in, swish them around and raise them out when they are done.

Picture attached, I only use the collection bottle for removing trub and yeast.

 

[RichardM]

If you are bottle conditioning how much yeast would need to add when priming?

 

[RoomWithABrew]

I would follow the instructions on the packet of yeast specially designed for bottle priming.
The only time I did a second yeast for bottling was for a winter old strong ale and I used champagne yeast mixed with the priming sugars and then divided between all of the bottles.

 

[Leon103]

I don't bottle any longer but when I bottled lagers I never added extra yeast even after weeks sat at 2c. Always seemed to be enough yeast to do the job.

 

[RichardM]

I don't bottle any longer but when I bottled lagers I never added extra yeast even after weeks sat at 2c. Always seemed to be enough yeast to do the job.

I've been doing some googling. The recommended rate seems to be 1 million cells per ml, or 1g of dried yeast per 20l, of beer. Most of the discussion seems to be about high OG beers needing it, I've found any mention of lagers yet.

 

[hoppyscotty]

Well brewday was a challenge. For some reason the malt was really thick. Not in terms of consistency but recirc was slow(brewzilla) and sparge was very slow. But ultimate hit headline numbers with some patience. Looks quite dark in the fermenter for a lager (4.8kg pilsner malt, 1.2kg Munich malt, 300g carapils) so not sure why. Currently in the fridge cooing to 8 - 10 degs before pitching yeast. So have plenty of time to suss out fermentation/diacetyl rest/lagering details. Thanks for help and advice so far.

 

[Leon103]

Well brewday was a challenge. For some reason the malt was really thick. Not in terms of consistency but recirc was slow(brewzilla) and sparge was very slow. But ultimate hit headline numbers with some patience. Looks quite dark in the fermenter for a lager (4.8kg pilsner malt, 1.2kg Munich malt, 300g carapils) so not sure why. Currently in the fridge cooing to 8 - 10 degs before pitching yeast. So have plenty of time to suss out fermentation/diacetyl rest/lagering details. Thanks for help and advice so far.

Munich comes in different varieties. Which did you use?

 

[An Ankoù]

Instead of tying up your fridge for around 1o weeks, why not ferment it warm (around 20C) with something like a West Coast lager yeast ( https://omegayeast.com/yeast/lagers/west-coast-lager or similar) and leave your lager brewing for the winter. You could then free up your temperature control fridge for at least three brews over that period.
Just a suggestion. You might not be as thirsty as me.

 

[hoppyscotty]

Good suggestion and I wish I had the foresight! fortunately I have other fermenting facilities and I'm part of a consortium of 4 home brewers so can crack on and brew other beers while this one is chugging along. Doing a Belgian Trippel tomorrow at my mates place so hopefully shouldn't be short of beer, and got two other batches in various stages of conditioning.

In future if I do another lager I'll do the fast pressure/higher temp methods as you suggest. The Irony is none of us are huge lager fans. I think we thought we'd try one for the technical challenge if nothing else. They're fine on a hot summers day if you're outside in the sun but can't see brewing many lagers as something routine in our brewing schedule.

Leon - the Munich malt that came as part of the Malt Miller recipe kit was just labelled as 'Crisp Munich Malt' so can't tell you much more than that. I put the recipe in Brewfather with as close a descriptor of the ingredients as I could find in the Brewfather database and couldn't get the numbs to get anywhere near close to the recipe numbers. Though ended up pretty much as per the recipe. Just used Brewfather for the water volumes and water adjustments rather than the core recipe and target numbers.

The malt came ready crushed as usual but seemed to have alot of fine flour in it which doughed up during the mash which I think clogged things up a bit. Sparge was so slow I stirred the grist to try to get things moving a bit more quickly or I'd still be there now. Not sure if this is a typical feature of pilsner and Munich malt? I normally use rice hulls when using oats or wheat in any reasonable volume but didn't occur to me to use them for pilsner or Munich malts.

It is an 'Intensely hopped lager' so elected to do the flame out hop additions as a whirlpool instead so not sure if that affects colour. Anyway I'm sure it will be more than drinkable even if it doesn't look like a lager!!

 

[hoppyscotty]

this is what it looks like in the fridge....Hopefully it'll lighten up as it clears.

 

[Leon103]

this is what it looks like in the fridge....Hopefully it'll lighten up as it clears.

Nice dark lager

 

[Leon103]

Good suggestion and I wish I had the foresight! fortunately I have other fermenting facilities and I'm part of a consortium of 4 home brewers so can crack on and brew other beers while this one is chugging along. Doing a Belgian Trippel tomorrow at my mates place so hopefully shouldn't be short of beer, and got two other batches in various stages of conditioning.

In future if I do another lager I'll do the fast pressure/higher temp methods as you suggest. The Irony is none of us are huge lager fans. I think we thought we'd try one for the technical challenge if nothing else. They're fine on a hot summers day if you're outside in the sun but can't see brewing many lagers as something routine in our brewing schedule.

Leon - the Munich malt that came as part of the Malt Miller recipe kit was just labelled as 'Crisp Munich Malt' so can't tell you much more than that. I put the recipe in Brewfather with as close a descriptor of the ingredients as I could find in the Brewfather database and couldn't get the numbs to get anywhere near close to the recipe numbers. Though ended up pretty much as per the recipe. Just used Brewfather for the water volumes and water adjustments rather than the core recipe and target numbers.

The malt came ready crushed as usual but seemed to have alot of fine flour in it which doughed up during the mash which I think clogged things up a bit. Sparge was so slow I stirred the grist to try to get things moving a bit more quickly or I'd still be there now. Not sure if this is a typical feature of pilsner and Munich malt? I normally use rice hulls when using oats or wheat in any reasonable volume but didn't occur to me to use them for pilsner or Munich malts.

It is an 'Intensely hopped lager' so elected to do the flame out hop additions as a whirlpool instead so not sure if that affects colour. Anyway I'm sure it will be more than drinkable even if it doesn't look like a lager!!

Crisp do dark and light munich. I would question whether they sent the right grains, that does look dark

 

[hoppyscotty]

Not sure if it is a feature of the Jon Finch recipes. We did two batches of his NEIPA recipe and they came out quite dark - not far off this. Cant think of what we might be doing in the brewing process to make it dark, especially with a Brewzilla, but ultimately it tasted fine. Should be the case here hopefully. Not sure if there is such thing as a Dunkel Lager, but that is what I might end up calling it ;-)

 

[RichardM]

Not sure if it is a feature of the Jon Finch recipes. We did two batches of his NEIPA recipe and they came out quite dark - not far off this. Cant think of what we might be doing in the brewing process to make it dark, especially with a Brewzilla, but ultimately it tasted fine. Should be the case here hopefully. Not sure if there is such thing as a Dunkel Lager, but that is what I might end up calling it ;-)

Dunkel is dark lager, made with predominantly Munich malt, which is dark. There are different Munich malts, some darker than others.

 

[RoomWithABrew]

you can get a lot more in that fermzilla, 4 litres plenty of headspace with pressure ferment.