Lagering - What Do You Use?

[Nick JD]

If you need to lager your lager for months to get it clear and tasting supurb you don't know much about lager brewing.

Sure, you can do that, but you don't have to. How many commercial lagers the world over are matured for months? Very few, if not none.

Filters, fining agents and skill will have that fridge free for the NEXT LAGER.

I'm not saying you shouldn't devote your fridge to -1C for 3 months and burn the equivalent power to pay for the beer in boxes of Cz Pils, but for those wanting to start out (this OP) in lager brewing the best way to put them off is to act like lagers are some kind of holy grail that should be worshiped ... they're not, they're just beer fermented slightly cooler.

The OP wants advice that will have him enjoying lager, not winning competitions; so mnay people give up making lagers because they only are aware of the insanly time-consuming way to make them, not the fining, filter and drink a week after primary way, which makes the beer about 98% as good back to back with a long lagered batch.

 

[Bribie G]

The best selling Pils in Germany is brewed at 13 and lagered for 10 days. It's no Pilsner Urquell or Zlatopramen but it's obviously a popular drop.

I guess that the traditional lagers were made the way they were because they could, and really had to.
They had underground caves and passages that they could keep at near freezing cheaply and the lagering was their way of clearing out the beer to crystal clarity, thus removing chill haze etc by months of settling.

However as Nick pointed out we have modern techy shortcuts like Polyclar and modern refrigeration which can hold the beer at -1 (was it Murrays that told the lads on a trip down there that a week at -1 is the equivalent of a month at "normal" fridge temps? I think Ross mentioned it.)

Last year I brewed a German Pils in February for the BABBs comp in July and it won the lagers and picked up a trophy. I continued lagering it in the keg and it bombed at the State Comp - it had passed its best and developing dry astringency even at zero degrees. By October I tipped the rest as it was beginning to taste really unpleasant. I'm doing another one this year but I'll try that 13 / couple of weeks lagering method.

 

[manticle]

Nick:

Not necessarily three months but I find ALL beers, ales and lagers, benefit from some time in the fridge and I prefer not to add fish guts, cow's hooves or little pieces of plastic to my beer. 1-4 weeks for all beers - lagers, belgians and alts at the longer end, ales at the shorter.

It's not hard putting a fermenter in a fridge. You have another method that works for you - great. Not going to tell anyone they're doing it wrong but I prefer my beers when they's got a touch of lager about them.

 

[SJW]

I must admit that on very few if any occasions I have left a Lager alone for 3 months before drinking. As u could see from that Braumeister video I made, the Czech pilsner I poured that day had been fermenter for 10 days, crash chilled for 2 then it had been in the keg 10 days with gelatine, and it was pretty clear, and it got better too.
The way I see it if it takes me 3 months to drink one particular beer then the last schooy of that brew had been lagered for 3 months.

Steve

 

[Nick JD]

Nick:

Not necessarily three months but I find ALL beers, ales and lagers, benefit from some time in the fridge and I prefer not to add fish guts, cow's hooves or little pieces of plastic to my beer. 1-4 weeks for all beers - lagers, belgians and alts at the longer end, ales at the shorter.

It's not hard putting a fermenter in a fridge. You have another method that works for you - great. Not going to tell anyone they're doing it wrong but I prefer my beers when they's got a touch of lager about them.

You bottle though, don't you? You beer will be 2-4 weeks old when it's ready to drink...

 

[manticle]

Yes I bottle but that bottle conditioning time is at ale temps, not lagering temps. Unless I've missed what you mean?

 

[bruce86]

hey guy just to join in with the thread. When you are talking about largering you mean using a primary or secondary right. is it possible to larger bottles after they have had say 3 weeks at room then leave for say a week in a cold fridge or till it has fully conditioned. i realise it prob wont get as clear as in a secondary but will it give a similar effect?

 

[manticle]

Similar. The point to lagering is that cold, time and gravity work to drop various things out of the beer - proteins, hop particles, yeast etc.

If you do that in a fermenter or large/bulk vessel, when you transfer the bulk of the beer to keg or bottle, you can leave all that behind. If you lager in the bottle, then the stuff that drops out is in the bottom of each bottle.

I can more easily fit a fermenter in my fridge (or cube) than I can 28 bottles sitting upright.

 

[bruce86]

Similar. The point to lagering is that cold, time and gravity work to drop various things out of the beer - proteins, hop particles, yeast etc.

If you do that in a fermenter or large/bulk vessel, when you transfer the bulk of the beer to keg or bottle, you can leave all that behind. If you lager in the bottle, then the stuff that drops out is in the bottom of each bottle.

I can more easily fit a fermenter in my fridge (or cube) than I can 28 bottles sitting upright.

Ok cool cheers for that manticle. If say i had already done it (found an old fridge and had the space for 28 bottles ) would the protiens etc stay at the bottom of a bottle like the yeast if you pour it out carefully or would it be more likely to stir straight back into solution. oh by done it i put them in yesterday didnt have the facilities to larger 3 weeks ago with the ferm freezer having another beer in it.

cheers

 

[Steve@PMF82]

All lagering is , storing beer for a long time at cold temps.
IMO there are benefits doing this in bulk, but eventually the same things will happen if you bottle first.
Its just gravity, cold and time.

Ive only done a few lagers, but yeah you can achieve all of the same things that happen over time, by cold condition for a week at -1, with some Polyclar, then running through a filter, bright , FRESH and clean tasting Lager Style beer.

Of course this assumes that you have pitched a shed load of yeast at 10 - 12 degrees and given it 2 weeks in primary.

 

[manticle]

Ok cool cheers for that manticle. If say i had already done it (found an old fridge and had the space for 28 bottles ) would the protiens etc stay at the bottom of a bottle like the yeast if you pour it out carefully or would it be more likely to stir straight back into solution. oh by done it i put them in yesterday didnt have the facilities to larger 3 weeks ago with the ferm freezer having another beer in it.

cheers

If you're careful, you can leave it behind - same as you need to be careful transferring the bulk beer.

 

[Brend0]

With ther STC-1000, what happens to the freezer component of the fridge? It will drop out when it switches the fridge off wont it...

 

[bruce86]

Cheers again manticle and beer4u

 

[Dazza88]

With ther STC-1000, what happens to the freezer component of the fridge? It will drop out when it switches the fridge off wont it...

Yeah everything turns off in the fridge.

In my bar fridge fermenting fridge (freezer section within main fridge),

Run stc at cold temps, like four, the freezer will freeze up.

Run stc at 18C to ferment ales, the freezer defrosts out cause the stc runs the fridge for much shorter intervals to maintain this temp.


Going from cold to ale ferment temps can result in a fair bit of melting freezer ice dripping down into the fridge. Towels can be handy for this. I also put a stock pot lid over the fermenter so i dont get freezer water pooling on the glad wrap covering the fermenter opening.

EDIT: watching lager threads with interest as i do a voodoo-rain dance around my 2278 starter to get it going.

 

[Filby]

I find the 'costs a carton to run' quite interesting.

My chesty is 100w and runs about 1 in 5 when at 0deg. So lets do some sums.
0.1kW/hr * 24 *0.2 = 0.48Kw/day.
0.48 * 26cents = 12.48cents/day.
12.48cents * 30days = $3.75

So run cost to store my lager at 0deg for a month is $3.75. Even running at 100% its only $18 a month.

Thats a seriously cheap carton!

Fil

 

[sim]

I find the 'costs a carton to run' quite interesting.

So lets do some sums.

Awesome, thanks. Glad someone checked that out! Damn fudgey figures.

 

[Nick JD]

I find the 'costs a carton to run' quite interesting.

My chesty is 100w and runs about 1 in 5 when at 0deg. So lets do some sums.
0.1kW/hr * 24 *0.2 = 0.48Kw/day.
0.48 * 26cents = 12.48cents/day.
12.48cents * 30days = $3.75

So run cost to store my lager at 0deg for a month is $3.75. Even running at 100% its only $18 a month.

Thats a seriously cheap carton!

Fil

100W freezer?

 

[Filby]

100W freezer?

Yerp my 140lt is 100w. My 1200lt chesty is 310W and my upright freezer is 220W. And the 550,000lt cold room I installed and commissioned last week was 14,000W. Whats your point?


Fil

 

[JoeF]

I recently got access to a coolroom and have cubed two lagers ( 1 x Budvar Pils and 1 x Lice Rager) and was planning to lager for an extended period - say 3 months (ish) but now from reading through this thread, maybe I won't wait that long...

For those that have lagered before (i've only ever done a czech pils lagered for 1 month) for extended periods what's your ideal lagering time?

 

[Nick JD]

Yerp my 140lt is 100w. My 1200lt chesty is 310W and my upright freezer is 220W. And the 550,000lt cold room I installed and commissioned last week was 14,000W. Whats your point?


Fil

So if it was a normal sized freezer using your calculations and the 3 months lagering I mentioned, it would cost about a box of beer.

That was my point. Unless you had quite a few cubes in there you're doubling or tripling the cost of a batch, just to get it a little bit better. I believe this is a significant point for a thread about someone new to making lagers and being told they must "lager".

Gelatine, polyclar and a filter. Done. I'm not saying it's the right way ... just another way. And the commercial way.

Oh, and 14,000W? Very impressive.