1st Lager, so now what?

[Sambrew]

So I decided to enter the world of Lagers. Decided on a simple Czech Pils- Mainly Weyerman Pils, with some melanoiden thrown in for good measure, hopped with Hallertau and French Strisselspelt used Wyeast 2278.
Made myself a temperature controlled fridge (with an STC1000 PID) and sat it a 8-10 degrees fermenting for just over three weeks, hit 1015 SG and have pulled it out of the fridge to do my diacetyl rest, its currently in the old man's wine cellar which sits at around 18 degrees and its bubbling away nicely again, tastes ok (no infections), and looks the goods.

it has some Haze- when should i add gelatine?
do i crash chill it?
and at what temperature should i lager it? will the wine cellar 18deg C do?
is there anything else anyone thinks i have missed?

 

[waggastew]

Are you kegging or bottling?

If kegging I would put it in the keg warm, then get it down to 2degC (ie in the keg fridge) and leave it for as long as you can stand it.

If bottling maybe bottle warm, wait for them to carb up, then store cold.

You can cold crash before doing either of these things to remove some of the yeast. Some lager profiles use a slow temp drop to keep the yeast active. Gelatine works best at cold temps so would be best to do after CC and befofe bottling/kegging. You can also gelatine in keg and then transfer to fresh keg.

With lagers the main enemy is yeast when serving. The main effect of lagering is the removal of suspended yeast and solids which removes many flavour compounds. In the keg this happens over time. You can transfer to another keg if you plan on transporting keg.

In the bottle I would suggest leaving them in the fridge and try to pour without much distrubance of the yeast.

 

[manticle]

Add gelatine when it has finished and had a little bit of extra time to clean up any diacetyl, acetaldehyde, etc.

Yes chill it, then leave it chilled for several weeks. Traditional lagering is done cool where yeast is very slowly active and cleaning up yeast byproducts. Hopefully if you have healthy yeast and your diacetyl rest is successful you should be right just to chill and let it stay chilled till carbing time. For lagers I aim for a two week minimum - 3-4 weeks if I can wait that long.

Anything between 0 and 5 should be OK. 18 is not lagering.

 

[Sambrew]

Yeah Wagga its going in a Keg,

and as i plan to do and ale next - in the lager fridge it shall go for lageragering. So going by the feedback, i'll let it rest at 18C for a week? then rack it off into a keg, CC to 5C, then add Gelatine to remove haze and so-forth. Then see how long i can go with out drinking it. Sound OK?

Or should i CC the fermenter and ad the gelatine before i put in the keg?

 

[Blind Dog]

If you can, add the gelatine and let it do its things before it goes in the keg. Gelatine creates an easily disturbed layer at the bottom of the fermenter/keg that's easy to stir up and them takes a fair while to settle out again

 

[Sambrew]

Cheers Lads. Ill let you know how it goes.

 

[Sambrew]

Well the diacetyl rest was successfull, and the beer cleaned up nicely, the gelatine worked to a certain extent, but I still have some (very little) chill haze. I have been patient and have not drunk any until today, result is a great beer. Thanks for the info lads, I might chuck in a bit of Vienna next time though.