Cold Fermenting - Help!

[Mitcho]

Hi all,

I have just joined the forum after sitting on the sidelines and reading for a few months.

Anyhow, I've been brewing for a few years, mainly just K&K's, with varying degrees of success. Pretty much I'm just using the kits, some Brew enhancer from Brewcraft, some tea bag hops and only recently, some crushed malt grain.

I've brought a Brewcraft Czech Pils kit, some Czech Pils Brewcraft Enhancer and some Saaz teabag hops. I was thinking of using an old fridge set to about 10-12 degrees for a cold brew. Any ideas or suggestions on how I should go about this, ie: temp, ferment time etc, or anything I should add to the recipe?

I have some S-23 yeast also. I'm a bit confused as the yeast packet says to use 2 x 11.5g bags if brewing at cold temps. Is this too much? Again, any ideas or suggestions?

Like I said, I'm pretty new to this game so any advice from some sage old heads would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Mitcho

 

[cozmocracker]

Hey Mitcho,

welcome aboard! try this link for pitching amounts, you can change gallons to litres and such.

http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html

two packs of dried yeast sounds right because of the colder fermenting temperatures, especially if you pitch at the 12 degree mark. the colder temps mean the yeast takes a bit longer to get up and running.

using a fermenting fridge is a great way to go, highly recommended, 12 degrees sounds just right for the S-23, you can expect it to take 2 or 3 weeks to ferment out, you may want to think about racking to a secondary if you have one available,probally about 5 days in once the major part of the ferment as taken place, just an option.

i new to this too so i hope i havent steered you wrong!

cheers cozmo

 

[seemax]

I do lagers at 8-10C, but up to 12C ok. S-23 produces more estery notes than say W34/70 or S189.

The amount of yeast depends on pitching temp. Purest tend to pitch and ferment at the same temp, meaning you need a higher yeast count. Others pitch warm and then chill.

My advice to make things easy and cheaper, pitch your 11.5g S-23 packet at 20C, then throw it in the fridge set at 10C. Aerate the wort really well prior to pitching (stirring, drill and whisk, sloshing, etc). Leave it 2 weeks and check SG, make sure it's fermented out completely.

Bring up to room temp for 1-2 days, then either bottle or rack to secondary and cold condition.

 

[Bribie G]

Welcome to the Pilgrimage , Mitcho :icon_cheers: :icon_cheers:

If you have had success with kits n bits so far, then branching into a lager yeast with cooler fermenting temperatures is a good enhancement and should give you much cleaner nicer beer. A good grain to use is carapils, about 300g in a brew. You steep it at about 68 degrees in around a litre of water, strain into a pan and boil for a while. Rather than using the Saaz teabags which are expensive you can get 90g 'shrinks' of hops from the sponsors at the top of the page for around a third of the price per brew.
You should boil the hops with the 'runnings' off the specialty grain. Carapils gives a better head, lacing, and body in the beer.

The reason they recommend two sachets of lager yeast is that because of the lower temperature, a greater amount of yeast is usually pitched into lagers as opposed to ales which are at a higher temp and the ale yeast gets off to a quicker start . Being a tightarse I would tend to make up a 'starter bottle' and breed up some extra yeast from one sachet before doing the main brew and pitching.

One way of doing a 'fake' lager that turns out very acceptable is to use 'lager beer' ingredients but instead of the cheapy kit yeast, use a high quality clean fermenting ale yeast such as Nottingham or US-05 and ferment it colder than normal, at 14-15 degrees. For a kit this should give quite similar results as doing the full lager yeast thing and is quicker.

 

[chappo1970]

Welcome Mitcho

Yep all good advice from all. Best thing I ever did was get fementation temperature control. My beers improved by 100% IMO. A secondhand fridge a with fridgemate or tempmate is well worth the money and effort. Once you have that in place start using the different yeast to improve further. IMO trying lagering or different yeasts is a waste of you time and money without temperature control.

One way of doing a 'fake' lager that turns out very acceptable is to use 'lager beer' ingredients but instead of the cheapy kit yeast, use a high quality clean fermenting ale yeast such as Nottingham or US-05 and ferment it colder than normal, at 14-15 degrees. For a kit this should give quite similar results as doing the full lager yeast thing and is quicker.

A+++ BribieG - Did a Pils FWK with US-05 kept at 18C. Super clean, super tasty and super tasty.

 

[RobboMC]

If you just set your fridge to it's warmest setting that will possibly be somewhere near 6 deg C,
way too cold for brewing. I use a Kambrook timer on the power point, set for say 2 hours on and 2 hours off
for it's entire 24 hr cycle. This runs the fridge warmer than 6 deg C and you can adjust the on/off settings to raise and lower the temp. Gets affected by outside ambient temp of course, but it's better than the once a day check it would otherwise get.

By sticking one of those stick-on thermometers inside the fridge it makes it a lot easier to maintain the temp
you want without an expensive tempmate thingy.

Work you way into lager brewing slowly. Start at say 14 deg C and when you are good at that bring your target down
to 12. Consider making a starter with a single yeast sachet to increase the pitching rate, cheaper than using 2 sachets,
and quite easy as long as you keep everything clean.

 

[Ronin]

I have some S-23 yeast also. I'm a bit confused as the yeast packet says to use 2 x 11.5g bags if brewing at cold temps. Is this too much? Again, any ideas or suggestions?

I've been doing a few lager recently, when I bought 2124 I asked the guy at grain and grape about pitching rates and he said that if you'll need at least a 3-4 litre starter. That was a massive yeast cake at the bottom of the bottle. I very much doubt 2 11.5g bags will be too much yeast to pitch.

The lager ended up really clean which I think is due to the pitching rate I used.

I think there's nothing wrong with pitching warm and chilling (there's a lot of discussion about this on some of the Jamil podcasts), but if you want the cleanest lager possible I'm converted to pitching cold with a large amount of yeast.

I agree with the last two posters, the fridge thermostat isn't reliable. Get a fridgemate (I went and drilled a hole in my fermenter to fit the probe, this is optional ). Reliable temperature control is a birilliant thing.

Oh and they get much, much better if you can leave them to lager for a while.

James

EDIT: And in case you don't know what a fridgemate is, this is where I got mine.

http://www.craftbrewer.com.au/shop/details.asp?PID=718

They attach between the wall socket and the fridge socket.

 

[Mitcho]

Thanks for the info guys.

I plugged the fridge in and set it on its lowest setting and ran it for about 3 days so far. It seems to have a constant 9-10 degrees so I'm guessing from this the temp will be okay for a lager.

Plus, it's in the garage and we're coming up to winter in Adelaide so i'm hoping the temp should stay around the mark.

Cheers all.