First time lager

[CaptAwol]

After lot's of research and a request from a friend I finally decided to brew a lager and pressure ferment in Kegs.
I have a 65l and a 45l all in one brewer, normally I brew in the 65 and use 45 for sparging, however for this day rolls reversed.
The brew is a basic German pilsner at 4.2% similar to the one in the Crisp malts book and as my friend is not a hoppy person I slightly reduced and altered the hops.
So after basic water treatment, though my ph tester failed but I had some test strip's which aren't great but gave an indication that pH was somewhere close.

I find it's to messy to stir in grains as dust gets everywhere and other end of my garage I have my motorcycles, therefore I underlet, after breakfast and copious coffee I'll stir it all.

Then start the mash at 63°c for 60min

After the first mash I raised it to 70°c for 15min, mashed out at 75°c after which SG1.065
Sparging, unfortunately I couldn't read the water level on my 65l and had to guess on how much I was sparging and with no sight glass on the 45l couldn't see the level with grain basket sitting over it.

Not bad guess work, slightly more in the boil than what I intended, whirlpool for additions

After additions and boil, wort cooled down with counterflow chiller, another whirlpool and dropped out into Kegs

I'd intended to use safale us05 in one and 34/70 in other, but had a bit of a question moment and opted to just split 34/70 between the two

Hope post comes out ok, my first time posting for a brew day so be gentle

 

[Baldbrewer]

Hi,
How do you find fermenting in the corny kegs?
will you rack it off from these or serve direct from the corny kegs?
what are your systems? just curious as I use a 20L braumeister but am considering upscaling.
ta .

 

[StJayJay]

Looking good. Never pressure fermented before so following with interest to see the results. What temperatures are you fermenting at and how long are you thinking of lagering it for once fermentation is done?

I would have probably not gone with the US-05 either, just out of concern of balance quite distinct flavour with a light malt/hop recipe like that. I’ve used it in what was otherwise an ESB recipe before and it threw things off against that more robust recipe; it’s my go to for IPAs etc though.

 

[CaptAwol]

Hi,
How do you find fermenting in the corny kegs?
will you rack it off from these or serve direct from the corny kegs?
what are your systems? just curious as I use a 20L braumeister but am considering upscaling.
ta .

It's a first for me after watching lot's of YouTube, OG 1.041 and pressure about 12psi after 5 days sg1.014

Hi,
How do you find fermenting in the corny kegs?
will you rack it off from these or serve direct from the corny kegs?
what are your systems? just curious as I use a 20L braumeister but am considering upscaling.
ta .

First time for me and I'm fairly new to corny's
After 5 days the sg has dropped to 1.014 OG was 1.041, to get a sample for sg means reducing pressure and using tap, after 6 day's the bubbling has started to ease off though still going one every few seconds so I may take another sample tomorrow.
After fermentation has finished I intend to crash cool and add gelatin then leave until I'm ready to crack one, then I intend to rack off to another corny.

 

[CaptAwol]

Update, I tried to take sample's from both kegs, however one of the kegs was just gassing off and no beer! Initially I thought that the floating dip tube must have blown off and realised that either way I'd have to open up that keg at sometime, as fermentation appeared to have stopped in one and other was only producing 1 bubble every 25 second's I decided to start crash cooling and add gelatin. I opened up the problem keg and it turned out that the float had somehow got stuck wedged around its post at top of the keg, I'd prepared for whatever and using the sanitised syringe holding the gelatin to free it flooding with co2 and purging after replacing lid.
I intend to transfer one of the kegs next week and hopefully make it drinkable

 

[CaptAwol]

Today I attempted a closed transfer of one keg however same problem with dip tube occurred. After a bit of surgery (hand sanitiser and gloves from the COVID) I managed to attach a stainless steel band clip to end of dip tube as I'd done with previous 6 kegs which solved the problem. Transferred from the top leaving a liter behind so hopefully I've got a keg of clear lager that can travel.
I had to sample the lager and I'm quite impressed, it's really clear with a good head and for a non lager drinker I quite like it. Cheers everybody