Vienna Lager - advice/help required

[keine_ahnung]

Ah ok, so pilsner should be a tad warmer than your traditional bavarian lager.
Cheers

I may have explained that poorly before, but "pilsner" can also be a bavarian lager. A bavarian pils and a czech pils are both pilsners (i.e. pils is just the abbreviation for pilsner), just a slightly different breed. A good comparison would be Vegemite and Marmite. To anyone who's used to one product, the other one is noticeably different. But in general, they're basically the same.

But I'd say your logic is spot on thinking that a czech pils would be fermented a bit warmer.

And...brainfart from me on the FG. I overlooked the fact that you've got a bit of Munich and Carafoam malt. In which case 1015 is probably quite reasonable

 

[MashMasterMike]

If I were you, I wouldn't worry about doing the double swap thing when you rack to make sure you've a temp probe in the beer. Once the fermentation is complete, the temp isn't soooo critical. Cold is cold. If you set your fridge to 0-1deg, you should be good

I thought about that. I can use 'fridge constant' mode but the reason for preferring to use the beer probe is that the freezer will be on less as it's only trying to keep the 40+liters of beer stable, whereas the air within the freezer changes quickly so using fridge constant mode causes the compressor to run on/off a lot more.

1015 is a pretty high FG for a pils. We used to get around 1008-1010. But who knows, with all that lager time you're doing, it could well come down a bit.
Would be interesting to start tasting it at various stages during the lagering. See what you think.

Yeah I'm not sure what it will end up at. 1015 is just based off 72% attenuation which is in the middle of the range Wyeast suggest for this strain. I don't think the small quantity (6% all up) of munich and carafoam are having a huge impact on the terminal gravity. According to beer tools pro, even if i turn those two ingredients off making it 100% pils malt, it's only 1 point lower.. we shall see.
Good attenuation is probably the part of brewing I struggle most with.

In terms of taste tests during lagering, yeah I will most definitely do that. I tend to taste test my brews all the time starting from the first sparge runnings all the way to completion... at which point I 'taste test' the whole keg until there's none left
You start to get a good idea of when a finished beer will be good/great even before fermentation is complete... assuming nothing unfortunate happens thereafter.

Thanks for the advice, I'll start a new thread and provide some updates as it progresses.

 

[Meddo]

G'day @keine_ahnung, I'm after a bit more advice too please if you don't mind. I've brewed the recipe below - my first lager - and it seems to be progressing reasonably well (perhaps a bit too slow?) but I would like a bit of a confirmation / sanity check please? It's a bit scary running these lager temperatures when you're used to ale fermentations...

So this is being done with WLP860 Munich Helles Yeast, which apparently is the Augustiner strain. These packets were about 12 months past their best before date but since this yeast is unavailable fresh at the moment I decided to give it a go anyway. So it got built up in starters on a stir plate using two packs into 800 ml @ 1.028, then into 5L @ 1.040, chilled to floc out, then the slurry pitched into another 800 mL @ 1.040 on the stir plate for a couple of hours prior to pitching to wake the yeasties up again. I diluted the room temp (~22 degree) wake-up starter with an additional 750 ml of wort at 7 degrees, then another 1 litre 10 minutes or so later in an attempt to get the yeast closer to the temperature of the wort before pitching.

The wort (42 L) was at 7 degrees prior to pitching but probably warmed up to 9-11 degrees while decanting into the fermenter. Pure O2 to the wort immediately after pitching. It would have been back to 7 degrees within a couple of hours after pitching.

Krausen and airlock activity didn't appear until sometime between 36-48 hours after pitching, when I raised the temperature to 8 degrees. At 60 hours the krausen still didn't fully cover the surface of the beer. At 3 days the gravity had dropped from 1.058 to 1.054 (bumped the temp up to 8.5 degrees), and seems to be around 1.035 to 1.040 six and a half days after pitching (bit hard to tell as I wasn't able to degas the sample properly). I left the first sample (1.054) sitting on the bench top at ambient (~23 degrees) with a foil cover as a test for FG, 3 days later it was at 1.013 and the yeast had flocced out.

So, is there anything jumping out at you there as being not quite right, timing wise? Does an FG of 1.013 seem about right from OG 1.058 for an Augustiner-strain beer? Also, when you talk about timings at other points in this thread ("after XX days" etc.), do you start your count from when it was pitched or from the first appearance of low krausen? (all my timings above are from pitching)

Thanks a lot for your contributions here k_a and any feedback you can give on the above.

Recipe
Style: Munich Helles
Author: Lee
Eff. (End Boil): 79.1 %
Vol. (End Boil): 47.3 l
Vol. (FV): 43.3 l
OG: 1.058
FG: 1.013
IBUs: 15
EBC: 9

Water Profile
Ca+2 = 77 ; Mg+2 = 0 ; Na+ = 8 ; Cl- = 81 ; SO4-2 = 80 ; Mash pH = 5.34

Mash
55c for 15mins, 63c for 90mins, 71c for 15mins

Grist
95.65% Ger Wey Pilsner (11kg)
2.17% Ger Wey CaraHell (0.25kg)
2.17% Ger Wey Carapils (0.25kg)

Hops (Boil)
FWH Hallertau Mittelfruh (Ger 2017 4.9% Pellet) 40g = 10.8 IBUs
20mins Hallertau Mittelfruh (Ger 2017 4.9% Pellet) 15g = 2.7 IBUs
0mins Hallertau Mittelfruh (Ger 2017 4.9% Pellet) 15g = 1.6 IBUs

Yeast
WLP860 Munich Helles Lager Yeast

Fermentation Notes

 

[Meddo]

Just noticed that this is in the "Vienna Lager advice" thread, sorry for the off-topic Munich Helles questions...

 

[keine_ahnung]

Hey Meddo,
first thoughts: your recipe looks quite good in terms of the ingredients. Mash schedule also looks good. (Interesting that you do a protein rest. What's your thoughts behind that? Not a criticism at all, just interested to hear your thoughts on it).

The main thing that pops out at me is the old yeast. A year is a long time for it to be sitting around. At which temp was it stored?
If I follow your starter description correctly, it sounds like you've warmed and cooled it a few times before pitching. Not sure that's so great for the yeast. Sounds a bit like unnecessary stress for the yeast to me.

Certainly does seem to be fermenting slowly. Where's it at now?

 

[keine_ahnung]

Just noticed that this is in the "Vienna Lager advice" thread, sorry for the off-topic Munich Helles questions...

All good. It's not so off-topic. In terms of brewing process they're practically identical...

 

[Meddo]

Hey Meddo,
first thoughts: your recipe looks quite good in terms of the ingredients. Mash schedule also looks good. (Interesting that you do a protein rest. What's your thoughts behind that? Not a criticism at all, just interested to hear your thoughts on it).

The main thing that pops out at me is the old yeast. A year is a long time for it to be sitting around. At which temp was it stored?
If I follow your starter description correctly, it sounds like you've warmed and cooled it a few times before pitching. Not sure that's so great for the yeast. Sounds a bit like unnecessary stress for the yeast to me.

Certainly does seem to be fermenting slowly. Where's it at now?

It was at 1.026 twelve hours ago, tastes pretty good to me so far apart from the rotten egg stink which I guess is to be expected.

Given it's now two-thirds attenuated I think I'll just gradually bump the temp up a bit - half a degree per day or something up to max 12 perhaps - to make sure it gets all the way down, unless you have any other suggestions?

Yeah if it's going slow (as it seems and as you've confirmed) it must be yeast health. It's a new thing for me managing starters around a cold pitch temperature, especially in a Brisbane summer. With hindsight I should perhaps have used a fresh batch of WLP838 instead for my first lager but I'm really keen to give this WLP860 a go and figured I may as well do it now before it gets even older. It's been stored in the fridge its whole life so it's probably as good as it can be for its age but certainly suboptimal.

Re the protein rest, that was due to a misreading of the relevant texts - I read "will aid head formation" but missed the next bit which said "but may have the opposite effect on well-modified malts". Will see how it turns out on this batch but am expecting to skip it for the next one. Do you have any experience with that particular malt (Weyermann Bohemian Pilsner) as to whether it's likely to benefit from a 50 or 55 degree protein rest?

 

[keine_ahnung]

Hey Meddo,
how's your Helles coming along?

Just realised I forgot to reply back then..

In terms of the Pilsner malt from Weyermann, it's hard to say without a Malt-Analysis. Malt is different every year, and even varies a bit batch to batch. Depending on how intense, short, hot, etc the summer was, whether it rained around harvest time, etc etc, the content and make-up of the protein is strongly influences, which largely affects the malting process. Thus it's impossible to always make exactly the same malt.

See what your head-retention is like with this batch and then see from there on what you want to do next time

 

[Fleabag]

Finally got round to attempting this again. Mostly unchanged recipe.

Looks like the fermentation is slowing down way before what I hoped was FG - is this normal for this yeast? (M76 Mangrove Jacks Bavarian Lager)

Do I just need more patience?


Brewfather