ideal prime for dark lager

[shocker]

I accidentally made a batch of extract based dark lager , OG 1050 , FG 1012 . When I say accidentally , I mean the dark part , not that I tripped over the cat and made some lager as I fell . It has fermented with its lager yeast , sat in a secondary and been fined . Now I plan to transfer to a bottling bucket and batch prime before bottling in mainly 500ml glass and crown capping .

I have to hand honey , some golden syrup , a little invert sugar syrup , glucose and granulated white . I primed the first lot of lager I made with half a teaspoon of sugar in some of the 500ml bottles , the same of glucose in others and it is woefully underprimed . Admittedly it is a little young to be drinking yet as it had two weeks in the warm and only two weeks out in the cold , but still .....still ? Nearly flat . I am more used to making cider and beer and not fussing much about fizzyness but this isnt for me and the intended victim likes his fizz .

So , priming amounts - I read anything from 50 to 160 grams for a 25L batch in searches and books . Whats it to be ? This is a 20L length by the way . :hmm:

 

[RobWalker]

Cold, flat. Warm, carbed. Theres your issue.
There are calcs online that will tell you how much for what style and what ingredient, probably your best bet. Glucose is nice and clean for carb, but id suggest trying brown sugar or dark dme for a dark brew. Good luck with it!

 

[shocker]

Thanks Rob . Trouble is , you see , lager needs to be served cold !

I have never really gone in for lager making in the past and I am only just getting going again after a long break from brewing so the fact the stuff is drinkable at all is pretty amazing to me .

Now , what I used to do many years ago was to settle and maybe fine ales in a secondary FV then prime each bottle with sugar AND a grain or two of Formula 67 yeast compound . Dave Lines in his Big Book recommends "krausen" yeast addition at the pre bottle stage with bottom working Lager yeast .

So I was wondering also if the lack of that extra yeast was the issue for all that most say enough survives the settling and fining - maybe a different thread ...?

 

[RobWalker]

I doubt it! Despite being updated a lot of home brew books can suffer from strange information that isn't exactly relevant any more...I have the updated version of brewing beers like those you buy and it still talks about diastatic malt and the "edme" brand, both of which are non existent now - malt extract with diastatic power was once needed for conversion which is no longer the case. But that's all just trivia, really.

Brewing has come a long way since then and you're generally fine to just bottle up, yeast is very healthy and will carbonate your beer fine. If you are fermenting cool and then using the lagering stage to remove off flavours, I don't think there's any reason you couldn't move it to a warm place to carbonate after the lagering period, but you'll have to double check on that one as I've never done it.

If you're not actually lagering (storing in the cold to remove off flavours) and are just making a lager style beer, carbonate in the warm and then move to the cold, it's fine :)

 

[shocker]

Thats what I did Rob , fermented as per yeast directions and then had it two weeks in the warm after bottling to get the carbonation before moving it back to the cool and dark .

 

[shocker]

So , for this one , the Golden Brown which consists of :

1800 g light liquid malt extract
750 g white sugar
350 g glucose
125 g crystal malt (steeped)
50 g northern brewer
25 g saaz
mauribrew 497 lager yeast

...and is a 23L brewlength , that is steady at 1012 and has had finings 4 days ago , I am thinking that I will batch prime .

I would rack into another bucket for bottling and add the priming sugar there . I am thinking of adding a little of the original ferment yeast to this as I have saved some . As mentioned above , I always used to get best results adding a tiny amount of yeast with the priming . So adding some lager yeast as a part of the batch prime should give a similar result .

Of course the bottles would be kept in the warm for 10 days to 2 weeks before going out into the cold to condition.

The two [problems that I have are this ;

1 - lager needs to be served very cold and this chilling before serving suppresses the CO2 action in the glass . Will more priming cure this ?

2- the amount to batch prime . I shall be using glucose or white sugar for ease - if I was more confident on this one I might used boiled honey .Whatever . I have looked at various calculators for all sorts of lagers and Bocks (which this is the closest to) and I am getting answers from 3 to 5.3 ounces of white sugar . That roughly goes 84 g to 150-ish grams . What amount should I use to get a lively when chilled lager ?

Oh yes ! And what about cheating with heading liquid ? I dont have the kit to force carbonate , just pressure barrels and re con King Kegs . But header will at least give , well...a head on the lager when served .