Brewday no.3

[Flan]

My next brew day is tomorrow and I’m planning a lager extract brew. 2.4kg of light malt extract, 500g dme, 500g brewing sugar. 2 x bavarian lager M76 yeast. Fermenting in the cellar at 10-12° until FG is reached, then I want to dry hop for 3 days transfer to secondary fv and condition at room temp for 2 weeks then i want to lager it in my brew fridge still in secondary at around 2° for 6 weeks then bottle it, so my question is when do i prime it? Do i prime it when i transfer to secondary then condition at room temp then in brew fridge at 2° or do i prime after lagering when I bottle it.

 

[RummerMan]

I like to do it before so I don't need to add it to the bottles. Too much faff for me

 

[Cestrian]

Prime it when you bottle it. I love M76. It makes really nice, smooth, malty lager. I made a helles with it recently. turned out great!
I would start to bring it up to room temperature half way to final gravity before you transfer to secondary. When you do transfer after final gravity plus 2 or 3 days, you can lager straight away. Also you don’t usually dry hop a lager but it’s up to you. It’s your beer!

 

[Flan]

Prime it when you bottle it. I love M76. It makes really nice, smooth, malty lager. I made a helles with it recently. turned out great!
I would start to bring it up to room temperature half way to final gravity before you transfer to secondary. When you do transfer after final gravity plus 2 or 3 days, you can lager straight away. Also you don’t usually dry hop a lager but it’s up to you. It’s your beer!

Thanks cestrian, yeah I’m not quite sure of the dry hop yet i was just thinking of doing this as I’m not doing any kind of boil up so I thought it might add a little something that might be missing but I’m open to any suggestions. How long was your fermentation to reach fg, I haven’t used a proper lager yeast before so i would expect it to be a little longer than an ale yeast will it?

 

[Cestrian]

Don't you boil up the DME? If you do just boil the hops for 10 minutes, or just dry hop. You don't need much for a lager. 20g should do it. What hops are you using?
Fermentation is longer than an ale yeast. Normally about two weeks. One week at low temp 10-12C and then increase slowly up to 18C for the second week.
One other thing - if you've got 1Kg of dme i would use that rather than 500g of sugar. It will turn out much more like the real thing. If not just go for it and then try all malt on your next brew to compare the two.

 

[Flan]

Don't you boil up the DME? If you do just boil the hops for 10 minutes, or just dry hop. You don't need much for a lager. 20g should do it. What hops are you using?
Fermentation is longer than an ale yeast. Normally about two weeks. One week at low temp 10-12C and then increase slowly up to 18C for the second week.
One other thing - if you've got 1Kg of dme i would use that rather than 500g of sugar. It will turn out much more like the real thing. If not just go for it and then try all malt on your next brew to compare the two.

I only had 500g of dme left over from bits I’ve bought to pimp the last couple of kits. I haven’t done a boil up no, I know i really should but i need a bigger pot i only have a small 5l stock pot at the moment. So today I’ve mixed 2.4kg of LME, 500g DME and 500g brewing sugar in 4 litres of boiling water then topped up to 23l, SG-1052. rehydrated 2 packs of bavarian yeast and pitched at around 17° it’s now in the cellar at around 11-12°. Now i know i need to add hops but when, how much and which would be best. I know this is a real hash job and I don’t know how it will turn out but it’s all a learning curve for me.

 

[Cestrian]

I don't know what LME you've used but I'm presuming it's already been boiled with hops like a can in a kit.
Lager hops are usually noble hops like saaz, hallertauer, tettnang. My favourite is hallertau mittelfruh.
You don't need to add late hops or dry hop a lager. They don't normally have a lot of hop flavour. If you do dry hop it's likely to be hazy and you're going to great lengths by lagering to make it crystal clear.

 

[Cestrian]

if you do dry hop you could do it 3 or 4 days before you transfer to secondary for lagering.

 

[Flan]

I don't know what LME you've used but I'm presuming it's already been boiled with hops like a can in a kit.
Lager hops are usually noble hops like saaz, hallertauer, tettnang. My favourite is hallertau mittelfruh.
You don't need to add late hops or dry hop a lager. They don't normally have a lot of hop flavour. If you do dry hop it's likely to be hazy and you're going to great lengths by lagering to make it crystal clear.

I used mangrove jacks craft series lme.

 

[Cestrian]

Never seen that before but just googled it. I think you have made beer with no bitterness. This is going to taste very sweet with no bitterness or balance. Normally you would boil the hops with some diluted LME before you strt to ferment. But it's not too late, you can boil hops in a pan of water to make hop tea, cool at the end and strain the hops off and add the tea to your brew.
You want to keep the volume quite low because you don't want to dilute your brew too much. If it is a low alpha hop like hallertau you can add 50g to a pan of water and boil for an hour. If the volume gets too low over the hour keep topping the boiling water up over so you have about a litre left at the end of the hour boil.

 

[Flan]

Never seen that before but just googled it. I think you have made beer with no bitterness. This is going to taste very sweet with no bitterness or balance. Normally you would boil the hops with some diluted LME before you strt to ferment. But it's not too late, you can boil hops in a pan of water to make hop tea, cool at the end and strain the hops off and add the tea to your brew.
You want to keep the volume quite low because you don't want to dilute your brew too much. If it is a low alpha hop like hallertau you can add 50g to a pan of water and boil for an hour. If the volume gets too low over the hour keep topping the boiling water up over so you have about a litre left at the end of the hour boil.

Brilliant, thanks Ian thats just what i wanted to know. Thanks for your help.