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hoppyscotty

hoppyscotty

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Not a great fan of the lager style, but it has its place and there are times when only a decent lager will do and I feel I need one in my repertoire. I've brewed a lager style beer a couple of times with reasonable success, but always felt I had to lager for weeks and weeks and weeks which has always put me off. I know you can brew them under pressure to speed them up a bit but these pseudo lagers always feels a bit like cheating to me and I'd prefer to do it properly. So for those of you who brew lagers regularly how long do you lager for? is it weeks on end or much shorter?

Ta.
 
I’ve never used it myself, but a few guys from the brew club swear by the Lallemand Novalager yeast, but that’s probably “cheating” too.

I usually lager for about 4 weeks for a 4.5-5% Helles.
 
I had brewed 4 lagers under pressure - 3 with a lager yeast and 1 with a Kolsch - all turned our great with just 10 days fermentation at 10 to 20psi (the first I did higher and went lower as I did more).

All 4 were brilliant beers that I got great feedback on.

Then a few weeks ago I brewed an ale and a lager at the same time - both with a similar recipe but one pilsner and one MO. The pilsner I brewed with the Crossmyloof Kolsch and just brewed in a bucket, no under pressure. As ever I drank it the day I kegged it (after 3 weeks in the bucket), and it tasted great - though now it's been in the keg for about 4 weeks and it just gets better with every glass.

I made the recipe up as I had a load of a friends homegrown Perle hops, 25 litres water, 4kg pilsner malt, and 20g of hops at 60mins, 20 and 10 - then a dry hop of 20g for 3 days before crashing and kegging.

Great beer, great clarity, easy summer drinking and no sulphur taste at all.
 
I often start drinking my lagers within about 4 weeks. But to be honest... they do taste better after 2-4 months on average. I ferment with traditional lager yeasts but warmer, around 18 C seems good, no real off-flavors that I can discern. And NOT under pressure, don't see any need for that.
 

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