Bottling and Storing Lagers

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Two flavours

1, DMS (dimethyl sulphide). (sweet corn,cooked vegies taste)

Formed from a malt derived precursor during wort production (especially extract beers).
Desirable in some lager style beers.

2, Diacetyl (2,3-butanedione) (butterscotch,butter,milky tastes)

An off flavour in pale beers can be a good flavour in some darker beers stouts etc.

Formed in beer from a precursor produced by yeast during fermentation.
Can be formed by bacteria when hygene is not up to scratch.

A good strong boil will rid the beer of DMS
A good strong fermentation will rid your beer of diacetyl (even in lagers)
Some people do rests but this justs speeds up lagering with positive and negative outcomes.

The types of yeast I use are

http://www.whitelabs.com (my personal fav) Avail in aust from www.esb.net.au
http://www.wyeastlab.com/ avail from the oceanbrewing co in nsw

I'll have to find the contact for Ocean brewing co .

Seriously "liquid yeasts perform/taste better and are worth every cent if you reuse them for 5-6 brews.

I prefer whitelabs yeasts because they come in a "pet" test tube which can be reused and the cell count is higher . (pitchable amount)
wyeast come in a smack pack and you really do need to make a starter with this method.

I make starters anyway.

Wyeast sell the "budvar2000 H strain" This is supposed to be the Pilsner Urquell strain.

I've used this one and i reckon it is (i love this yeast)

Regarding making the liquid yeast starters here is my method.

Making Starters,

1, keep some boiled wort from each brew say 500ml-1 ltr in bottles in fridge
Or
2, Add 200g of dme to 2ltrs of boiling water sg 1020. Cool and pitch yeast.

I use sanitised 3lt coke bottles with a bung and air lock in the top for starter bottles.

I also have a mix of yeast nutrients which i add containing, multivitamins.diamonium phosphate,dried yeast hulls ( 1x packet of dried yeast).
I add these in small quantities to the starter wort at the boiling stage.
These act as food for the yeast and ensure healthy growth.
You have to be careful with the vitamins that they don't contain preservatives or too many acids etc. Trace elements should contain vit b1,b6,b12 zinc,magnesium,ascorbic acid(vit c) etc.
About 2-3g is heaps for a starter .
A smear of vegemite (essentially a multi vitamin/yeast extract) doesn't hurt either 1-2g

check out http://www.howtobrew.com for more info on yeast nutrients.

Cheers
SiMo
:D

Lines in red added by fiscus - merged 4 threads into one - makes for easy reading!
 
thanks for the info SiMoN
i will go liquid for my next batch , and after a couple of ales ....
the budvar h ( and you know what thats for :D )


simon
 
This reply might be a bit redundant to this thread, but I thought I might add that John Palmer at howtobrew.com (a fantastic website that renewed my passion in homebrewing) reckons that if you lager a brew in the fermenter (i.e secondary ferment at sub 15c for 4-6 weeks) you don't need to cold store your bottles. I have a bohemian lager in the fridge at the moment and will be bottling next week after 6 weeks lagering. Will let you know how it goes.
 
I have a larger that has been in the secondary for 4 weeks now - at 12c - I'm in the process of bottling now.

I'm going to keep the bottles at room temp for a couple of days - to wake the yeast up and then store cold - I might leave some out of the fridge in storage just to see if I can taste a difference.

I'm looking forward to this one. It's a shame that it will miss the Christmas day drinking :(
 
Ya might not Fiscus,

Bulk prime and keep a few warm 20-30c and you could be surprised

SiMo :p
 
Yep I have just bottled the first lot (trying some PET bottles for the first time) as well as my 1.5L Grolsch Bottle :) Its a beauty!

I bulked primed as well.

Should I keep them all warm for a couple of days (to get the yeast going again) or should I just keep the experimental ones warm and the rest of the batch cold?
 
Leave them the experiments warm and you might have fizz by xmas.

As you know i warm condition all my bottled beer (no choice) then chill a few days before drinking.
This works for me mainly i suspect because i only bottle bright beer that has fully matured and cleared so i get very little sediment/flavour from the residual yeast in the bottle so a higher temp just makes em mature faster in the bottles and helps the yeast to ferment all the priming sugar which incidently is a mix of malt and fructose. 7-8g/750ml .

How did you bulk prime ????

SiMo



:D
 
I bulk prime by disolving 180grams of dextrose in 500ml of boiling water (into a bottling bucket - which is just a spare fermenter) and then siphon out the brew from the secondary to to bottling container (being careful not to oxidise)

Once it is in the bottling bucket, I give a gentle stir to make sure the sure mixture is mixed well betwen the brew, and then bottle.

This method, is the same meothod that the http://www.countrybrewer.com.au reconmends.

Anyone else do it different?
 
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