Tips for Lager Brewing

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Sounds like a good system.
Out of interest, by cold break, do you mean hot break; that forms the trub cone in the bottom of the kettle after whirlpooling? Or do you let your wort cool to pitching temps in the kettle as well?
 
It is the combination of the hot break and cold break. You can see the hot break forming during the boil. I use whirlfloc and copper immersion chillers and you can see the cold break forming, which is much larger is size to the hot break as the wort is cooled. It usually takes about 35-40 minutes for the wort to cool to pitching temperatures. I don't whirlpool because of the use of immersion chillers, they restrict you from whirlpooling.

I'm from the old school.
 
Ah, the ol' immersion chiller. Didn't realize; I thought you were maybe just whirlpooling and not chilling.
Definitely hot and cold break in that case. ;)
Carry on, nothing to see here!
 
I brew litres and litres of the stuff usuall 150L per weekend of brewing and to me it's the easiest beer to make. There are certain rules to success along with a lot of myths. Firstly don't overuse the specilaty malts - stick witn pilsner, munich light and vienna. Crystal malts, melanoidin etc should be added in very small proportions. Secondly, watch with your hopping. Late hopping especialy with Saaz will impart a very grassy flavour that does not mellow out with aging. First wort hopping is the bees knees and is the only hopping schedule in my lagers.
Fermenting is where it's all at. You can pitch warm, I pitch at 25C and oxygenate with pure O2. This really kick starts fermentation but I do it get into a temp controlled chest freezer pretty quickly after pitching. Also I use 2 litre starters that have completely fermented out and the beery liquid discarded. Ferment at the yeast lab's recommended higher end of the temp range - not the lower end. When fermentation is nearly done - when the krausen starts to fall, crank the temp to 20C and hold until the krausen goes completely. Then crash back to fermentation temp. After that drop just 1C per day, hold for 3 days at 3C, crash to -2C and hold for 10 days approx then keg. You will have a super clean commercial grade lager beer. Easy Peasy.

labels, I'm following this regime at present. I assume you do all this in primary, or do your transfer for lagering?
 
labels, I'm following this regime at present. I assume you do all this in primary, or do your transfer for lagering?
No transferring or racking, too much chance of introducing oxygen, do everthing in the primary and leave the lid on until you're ready to transfer to a keg or bottling bucket. The least interferring the better until it's ready
 
Labels,
Can you expand on your first wort hopping a little more?
Can you give me an example of what your hopping schedule would be in one of your brews.
I've made some mistakes doing lagers, mostly under pitching leading to bacterial infection.....it really hurts pouring out the results of your labours onto the grass.
 
First wort hopping is just adding to the kettle as you run off from the tun. Hot steep in wort prior to boiling.

Sufficient pitching and avoiding infection are different issues - usually solved by pitching more and good sanitation*

*there are examples of environmental infections from hell getting the best of the most sanitary conscious brewers so that bit is not black/white
 
@belllup, manticle is spot on the money here. @homebrewnewb, a lot of what is in that article is beyond home brewers capability. However, adding sodium metabisulphite to mash and sparge water at the rate of 0.1g per litre does act as an oxygen scavenger and helps preserve more of the malt/pilsners flavours.
 
Are you (or others) pre-boiling your water using this Low DO method?
 
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EDIT: Deleted a question that I'm now going to ask in a more appropriate thread.
 
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Labels,
Forget about my under pitching and the like and tell me about your hop schedule.
I have been told that for pils and lager to aim for 70% bittering in the first hop edition and the other 30% can go wherever.
Could you tell me what works for you?
 
Labels,
Forget about my under pitching and the like and tell me about your hop schedule.
I have been told that for pils and lager to aim for 70% bittering in the first hop edition and the other 30% can go wherever.
Could you tell me what works for you?

Please read labels' earlier posts. He advocates only First Wort Hopping for his lagers.
That doesn't mean you can't do whatever you like because, after all, the beer you brew is your beer.
 
Labels,
Forget about my under pitching and the like and tell me about your hop schedule.
I have been told that for pils and lager to aim for 70% bittering in the first hop edition and the other 30% can go wherever.
Could you tell me what works for you?
For light lagers I only use first wort hopping generally, allowing the hops to steep in the first runnings for around 20 minutes before sparging or turning on the flame under the kettle. Just lately I have been experimenting adding some late hopping at around 15 minutes before flame-out however, I keep this very low, usually at somewhere between 0.2g and 0.5g per litre. My first hopping is using something like Hallertau and I have been trialing Wai-Iti for late hopping which is working out pretty amazing.
 
However, adding sodium metabisulphite to mash and sparge water at the rate of 0.1g per litre does act as an oxygen scavenger and helps preserve more of the malt/pilsners flavours.
Does potassium metabisulphite have the same effect? I use it to remove chlorine/chlorophenols currently, maybe it's doing a bit of oxygen scavenging as well.
 
Does potassium metabisulphite have the same effect? I use it to remove chlorine/chlorophenols currently, maybe it's doing a bit of oxygen scavenging as well.

I am not 100% sure on this one, I have read that it doesn't have the same effect and therefore Sodium Met should be used - however, I have no scientific evidence and without that I am certainly not diving into speculation. I have both so I use sodium met
 
Does potassium metabisulphite have the same effect? I use it to remove chlorine/chlorophenols currently, maybe it's doing a bit of oxygen scavenging as well.

In that LODO document it mentions this:

"Now, add 100 mg of SMB powder for every liter of mash water. If you don’t have powder and are instead using Campden tablets, there is 440 mg worth of SMB in each tablet (the rest of the tablet is filler). We should note, potassium metabisulfite is not recommended, as an excess of 10 ppm potassium can be detrimental to the mash [5]. ..."
 
I'll just carry on as I have been I think, haven't been disappointed with the malt flavors in my lagers. I use the potassium met at around 5mg/L for the chlorine treatment.
 
Does potassium metabisulphite have the same effect? I use it to remove chlorine/chlorophenols currently, maybe it's doing a bit of oxygen scavenging as well.

It has the same effect but you will need to increase the quantity by ~20% to account for the greater AW of potassium: SMS is about 67% available SO2, PMS is about 57%.

As noted above, you may not want that level of potassium in your mash, though with modern malts you'll probably get away with it.
 
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