2nd attempt at a lager.

[PaulCa]

I made a half a55ed attempt at a lager about a year ago, but being very new to mashing grain, having only previously used it for a few speciality grains with beer kits I didn't boil the wort for very long. That and fermenting it too cool for 2 weeks and removing it for a rest resulted in it nearly exploding all over the place. It tasted of vegetables and butterscotch and while I drank it after it had largered for another 3 weeks, it wasn't exactly nice.

So, take 2.

I have 3Kg of crushed British Lager malt arriving. Brewfarm Lager yeast (only I could find with my supplier). The recipe will be:

Batch - 9 litres (2 x 5 litre demijohns)
Boil - 9 litres (topped up with water at end to fill the demis)
Boil time: 90 mins

Mash: 2Kg british lager malt + 50-100g Light Crystal, 60 minutes at 62-65C in 8 litres of water.
Sparge: None. Just washing the grains with hot water is all I can do.

Hops: Probably just Sazz and lots of it for bittering, flavour, aroma and dry hopping. Say 10g each stage.

Recipe may vary once I run it through a calculator.

Protofloc for finings.

Cool to ~10C and ferment until airlock just stops completely and ferment looks like it's finished. ETA 2 weeks.
Allow to warm towards room temp for 12 hours to see if airlock restarts.???
Rack to secondary.
Cool to 4C and lager for 4-6 weeks.
Bottle and prime for 2 weeks.
Cool again for 1 week
Drink.

I expect it won't make the lager of my dreams, but it's just an experiment.

Any suggestions / tips?

 

[dennisking]

Not a lager brewer myself so bumping this to see if anyone has ideas.

 

[rpt]

Number one tip is use a hydrometer.

 

[Bopper]

Make sure you treat your water to remove chlorine or chloramine by way of a filter tap or a campden tablet and make sure you've got soft lager water, don't forget this the main ingredient! Give it plenty of time at the lager-ing stage.



Richard

 

[PaulCa]

Can I use aquarium conditioner to remove chlorine and chloramines? Although... thinking about it, will it not boil off in the boil or is that just chlorine that boils out?

My water is soft about 3* KH and about the same GH.

 

[Dave1970]

Can I use aquarium conditioner to remove chlorine and chloramines?

God no! It's not intended to be drunk or taste good :sick:

Campden tablets will do it for pennies, one tab gets rid of chlorine & chloramine from a full size brew so a quarter to a third would probably be enough for you

Like you said get it plugged into some brewing software (Brewmate's free) and adjust your malt and hops accordingly - if you set the style of beer it will colour the different boxes in yellow if they're outside of the range for that style. So if for example you're adding too many hops it'll tell you.

Personally I would leave out the crystal and just use the lager malt

 

[Bopper]

When i said filter tap, i meant a carbon filter tap! I would agree with Dave1970, use a campden tablet and leave out the crystal.

Richard

 

[PaulCa]

Ended up with this:

http://beercalculus.hopville.com/recipes/lager-mk-ii

(if the link works).

Might have a go at getting it going tonight.

Assuming that a more-or-less BIAB with no sparge will get 75% efficiency.

 

[PaulCa]

The mash is on and I've already screwed up and had to add hot water as the temp fell to 61*C. A splash of water from the kettle and quick stir and it's back to 65*C for the remaining 30 mins.

As I couldn't get campden tablets tonight, I went ahead and put 1 drop of aquarium dechlorinater in (the required amount for that volume!) but only after researching the active ingredients and their toxicity. Both sodium compounds, one was deemed non-toxic even in pure form, the other had an LD50% of 2.2g/kg when pure. Meaning that at 85Kg body mass I would need to drink 160g of the stuff pure to have a 50% chance of death. The concentrations in the conditioner were very low, so I would need to drink gallons of the conditioner to do much harm.

 

[PaulCa]

Well, it's done, ish.

Came out of the kettle with an OG of 1060, topped up the demi's and it was around 1049. Not bad for a 1048 target. Needless to say the wort tasted very sweet after the mash and quite nice actually :)

Will have to stay in the fridge overnight before pitching in the morning to get it down to 12*C.

 

[PaulCa]

Well closing in on 2 weeks at 12C and I have a little dilemma. The two demi's started to ferment at different times and different speeds. One has started to clear with just yeast chunks floating and I believe it needs racked to secondary. The other still has a few mm of foam, is cloudy and has bubbles rising.

I can obviously rack one of them off to secondary, but I can't drop the temp only having one fridge.

So the options are:
1. Rack the complete demi to secondary and put it back in at 12C.
2. Leave both as they are until both are finished, rack to secondary and drop the temp to 2C.

Any thoughts on which is best?

 

[winelight]

This is what I would do:

1. Rack first one to secondary and put back in at 12C
2. Wait until second one calms down, rack to secondary and put back in at 12C
3. Some time later check that both have reached FG (this can take another 2 weeks, or even longer)
4. Raise to 18C over a couple of days, then hold at 18C for a day or two for diacetyl rest
5. Drop to 2C over 3-4 days and then hold there for another month

 

[PaulCa]

Cool thanks :)

 

[PaulCa]

So Demi 1 racked. Gravity is still about 1018 so it has a while to go.

Tasting the gravity sample and there are very subtle off flavours and I can't quite put my finger on what they are. One is a fruity acidic tang which may be the high gravity, the other is an odd "burnt" organic kinda taste (tanins?), hard to describe. The good news is they are very subtle and the more sips I took from the sample the less I could taste them and the more it tasted like.... LAGER! If these off flavours clear up during final ferment and lagering it will be a nice lager.

Demi 2 looks like a few days away till it will be ready to rack, still has a few bubbles rising.

 

[PaulCa]

Just under a month lagering and I bottled it on Sunday. The bottles (PET) at cool room temp tightened up pretty quickly, so I took the half bottle left over and popped it into the fridge for a few days.

I wasn't holding out many hopes and as this lager was my third attempt at all grain brewing it was not boding well for moving to all grain ale brewing. The first two were pants, one includes the only beer I have ever thown out!

But...

While the half full test bottle is still mostly flat, IT TASTES LIKE LAGER! It's actually pretty good. A few rough edges, a nice sweet ton underneath, the Saaz hops haven't made any attempt at bittering it like a pilsner which I was hoping for. It's by no means barely wine, but Stella Artois it's not. I think I'm giving up on Saaz to be honest I just can't get it to work. This 2 gallon brew had like 10g at 60 minutes, 15 grams at 30mins and 15g at 5 minutes.

The only real negative point is there is a very subtle taste that I'm sure isn't meant to be there, it might be tannins or starch I can't tell, luckily it's barely noticable. If I had to choose between potato skin and tea, I'd be leaning towards potato skin.

Of course all of this is a bad thing, I was kinda hoping I could just strike lager off the list of things to brew cause it's just so much hassle. Now that the test lager actually worked I have no excuse but to try again some time and maybe up the batch size to 4 demi johns. Already planning fridge space.