Increase Temperature After Lagering Before Bottling?

[BjornJ]

Hi,
been reading with interest several threads here on lagering, mixed in with filtering and all kinds of interesting stuff

If I were to suggest the following as one possible way of making my first lager:

1. Wort and yeast starter both in the fridge to get to say 10-12 degrees before pitching
2. Ferment at 10-12 degrees at for say 2-3 weeks
3. Rack to cube, increase temperature to 18 degrees
4. Leave at 18 degrees for 2-3 days (Diacetyl rest if necessary pitching at this temp?)
5. Reduce temperature to 1-2 degrees C to "lager" for 2-3 weeks
6. Bottle

Now, there are lots of questions spinning around about the various stages here, but if this is one way of doing it, do I need to bring the cube up to say 18 degrees before bottling?

The reason I am asking is this;
A: If the beer has completed fermenting before being racked to cube and brought to 18 degrees C, there is little CO2 in the liquid. There is no need to bring back to room temperature before bottling, as I am not creating bottle bombs since the CO2 levels are from 18 degrees, not 1-2 degrees.
B: The beer does something or other at 1-2 degrees at the lagering stage, so the beer needs to be brought up to 18 degrees before bottling, or lots of CO2 will be in the solution and I will end up with bottle bombs because my carbonation drops are made for beer with little CO2 present in the liquid.

So do we need to raise the temperature before bottling after lagering?

(and a follow-up, do the bottles need to be in lagering fridge at 10-12 degrees while carbonating the bottles to keep the clean flavor or can they stand around in 20-25 degrees?)


hope that made sense?

thanks
Bjorn

 

[BjornJ]

seems Ross may have answered already, haden't seen that thread yet:

http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum//ind...amp;hl=lagering


Rest is correct - but if you don't have a secondary, chill the whole fermenter down to 2-3c for a few weeks - than warm back up, bottle & prime. Then keep cool (fermenting temp if possible) for a few weeks while it carbonates...

cheers Ross

 

[Adamt]

Yes, if you bring it up to 18 and let it rest you can confirm the carbonation levels (saturated at 18C).

After lagering it is difficult to determine what level of carb is in the beer - there's probably not enough co2 produced after fermentation to saturate it at layering temps.

You can carbonate at 20 if you want, there's only a small amount of fuel burnt, so not a huge window for off flavours.

 

[cubbie]

My understanding is that you do not have to raise the temp after lagering. The amount of dissolved CO2 is based on the warmest temp during fermentation.

Hence if you raise to 18c before lagering then you can can bottle at lagering temps and base your dissolved CO2 level as at 18c.

 

[buttersd70]

2 schools of thought. Some raise temp (again) after lagering, and then bottle. Others base it on the D rest temp for saturation levels. Either will work; neither is 'incorrect'. But raising back to temp is another step which, imo is unescessary. I wrote an article about using bulk priming calculators that discusses this, but it is basically as Adam and cubbie have mentioned....the saturation levels of co2 will be set and determined by the D rest, as at that point of the process, it is desaturating (at the higher temp) faster than it is saturating (from any remaining fermentation, which is only very minimal).

 

[Bribie G]

In "Beer Hunter" Michael Jackson pours a huge jug of beer from the lagering tanks at Pilsner Urquell, with a rich creamy head, and floats a coin on top of the brew. Wish my lagers were like that! However it does show that in commercial breweries still doing real lagering, a fair volume of CO2 must be in there.

Scuse pic quality

 

[BjornJ]

ok, so it sounds like on a grand scale there is quite a bit of carbonation going on at low temperatures, guessing yeast and volume play in as well?

But on the homebrew level I should be able to not heat up before bottling as CO2 saturation levels can be considered low after the couple of days at 18 degrees.

thanks
Bjorn