Quick Lager method

[Covrich]

Giving this a go , anyone done it before? Brewed on friday

4.8kg lager malt
450 gram wheat
Hops were Mittlefru and Saaz with Saaz @ 5 mins and some flame out

2 sachets of SAF lager 23.. ( this was ingredients bought by my parents to make a stella clone for my birthday) but even so it should hopefully be nice


Beer in Brew cool bag with a 5l ice bottle and a 2l ice bottle keeps the temp inside the bag 12ºc (think the fermentor stick says 13 or 14) surprised it works well..

Planning on leaving this until the weekend then starting to raise temp up to 16 18 and then room temp which will be about 20 where it is. and leave it for a week

I have no way to crash it to 1 so might try and throw as much frozen water I can in to get it to 10ºc for a few days

They also got me some gelatine to throw in?? ill do that then I guess and bottle it a few days later.

Prime for a few weeks then load it my fridge (winter time temps outside shoudl also help)


Sound like a sound plan?

 

[Wabby]

No such thing as quick and lager.

You can get a lager ‘style’ quickly, but not a ‘lager’.

 

[Covrich]

No such thing as quick and lager.

You can get a lager ‘style’ quickly, but not a ‘lager’.

It is this

http://brulosophy.com/methods/lager-method/

The theory is that you can, Hence why I asked has any one else tried it..

Whether it is to the benefit or not is debatable, but from what I have read many people seem to think it works..

 

[MyQul]

I made a light pseudo lager this eve. Im going to ferment it at about 15C with the brew bag using half notty and half CML Kolsch yeast because I havent got enough of either so 2 half packets will of each will have to do.

 

[Covrich]

I made a light pseudo lager this eve. Im going to ferment it at about 15C with the brew bag using half notty and half CML Kolsch yeast because I havent got enough of either so 2 half packets will of each will have to do.

I must admit even doing pseudo lagers I have been a little bit cheeky and only used a single yeast sachet but this is real lager yeast

You might be interested to know you can do lager temps in the bag though especially this time of the year when you don't have summer ambient temps to fight with

 

[MyQul]

I must admit even doing pseudo lagers I have been a little bit cheeky and only used a single yeast sachet but this is real lager yeast

You might be interested to know you can do lager temps in the bag though especially this time of the year when you don't have summer ambient temps to fight with

It's always good to use plenty of yeast for both pseudo and real lagers, for slightly different reasons. Plenty of yeast for real lagers, because of course its hard for the yeast to work at those cold temps and need more cells to do the work.
During my researches into pseudo's I discovered that using plenty of yeast suppresses ester production. The yeast just get straight down to work to ferment the wort and miss out the ester production bit. So I try to chuck loads of yeast at the wort, even though it will ferment with half the amount I pitch.

I alsways suspected I could manage lager temps during winter as my kitchen floor is about 15C during the coldest part of winter

 

[BeerCat]

Good plan. Not tried that yeast but i brew my Lagers like this now. Quick turnover. It will be cold enough soon to leave outside so get it out overnight and add finings. If you read another of their experiments they ferment at 18c with wlp800 and people cant tell the difference.

 

[henteaser]

I have no way to crash it to 1 so might try and throw as much frozen water I can in to get it to 10ºc for a few days

This is where I fear you'll really struggle in terms of turnaround time and clarity. I'm just not sure 10Ëšc will cut it unless you're willing to actually "lager" it for a longer amount of time.

I also find that yes, I can have a lager kegged after about 20 days, but it really is a different beast to ale in terms of conditioning.

It seems once bright, carbonated, perfectly clear and it's tasting good, it's still another 2-3 weeks later at serving temperature that the flavours truly mellow out, giving you a really clean, well-rounded profile that I'm looking for in a lager.

So I like to think of the "quick" lager method as just a way to get to the conditioning phase quicker, rather than purely grain-to-glass time.

 

[Wabby]

This is where I fear you'll really struggle in terms of turnaround time and clarity. I'm just not sure 10Ëšc will cut it unless you're willing to actually "lager" it for a longer amount of time.

I also find that yes, I can have a lager kegged after about 20 days, but it really is a different beast to ale in terms of conditioning.

It seems once bright, carbonated, perfectly clear and it's tasting good, it's still another 2-3 weeks later at serving temperature that the flavours truly mellow out, giving you a really clean, well-rounded profile that I'm looking for in a lager.

So I like to think of the "quick" lager method as just a way to get to the conditioning phase quicker, rather than purely grain-to-glass time.

100% agree with this.

 

[RLGMIlson]

Giving this a go , anyone done it before? Brewed on friday

4.8kg lager malt
450 gram wheat
Hops were Mittlefru and Saaz with Saaz @ 5 mins and some flame out

2 sachets of SAF lager 23.. ( this was ingredients bought by my parents to make a stella clone for my birthday) but even so it should hopefully be nice


Beer in Brew cool bag with a 5l ice bottle and a 2l ice bottle keeps the temp inside the bag 12ºc (think the fermentor stick says 13 or 14) surprised it works well..

Planning on leaving this until the weekend then starting to raise temp up to 16 18 and then room temp which will be about 20 where it is. and leave it for a week

I have no way to crash it to 1 so might try and throw as much frozen water I can in to get it to 10ºc for a few days

They also got me some gelatine to throw in?? ill do that then I guess and bottle it a few days later.

Prime for a few weeks then load it my fridge (winter time temps outside shoudl also help)


Sound like a sound plan?

How's the lager getting on ?

 

[Covrich]

How's the lager getting on ?

Pretty good I am letting it slowly rise to room temp now, will leave it a week then drop the temp down to 10ºc then add gelatine and see if I can get it to crash to really low ºc after which I will bottle carb then lager in fridge .

The whole purpose of trying this was to not have to try and not have to swap ice bottles for 4 weeks and do a quicker method.

Will see how it goes its my first go.

 

[Covrich]

Bottled this Wednesday, beer is quite clear.. Not crystal yet but looks promising and the botttling sample dreg tastes are promising.. Now to carb for a couple of weeks then store in fridge or in the garage if the freezing outside temps hold..

To calrify what I did

1 week at 12-14ºc
1 week a room temp (gradual increase up)
ramp down again when it was 8ºc added the gelatine (never used this before)
kept at around 2ºc for 48 hours it did start to creep up to 4-6 24 hours later at the point I bottled.

 

[BeerCat]

Be great to hear how this goes. As someone said earlier in the thread i think this method cuts down on the time in the FV but the beers still need a few months conditioning imho. Once crashed and bottled i leave them anywhere i can find space. Even left some in the airing cupboard for 6 weeks and they have been great. You can ramp the temp straight up to 20c with no ill effects either. I hold for 2 days then have a taster before crashing. I am going to try and fill the garage with Lagers this winter as they seems to have a great shelf life and the weather is free. :)

 

[Covrich]

That is fine, I wasn;t expecting it to be 4 week turn around, but without a "fridge" I was hoping to use it as a method to help quicken the FV process and not swap ice bottles for a month.. So far it appears to maybe be a success in that respect..

 

[Saisonator]

Definitely a good time to make lager for next summer, as is traditionally the way.

 

[GerritT]

Definitely a good time to make lager for next summer, as is traditionally the way.

The real art is to KEEP lager until summer, and not glug it away during the Christmas holidays :lol:

 

[Dutto]

If the brew has turned out okay it is probably due to the ingredients and yeast rather than the process.

In the last couple of years I have:

o Lagered a brew for 12 weeks at 6 degrees.

o Cold Crashed a brew for a week at one degree AFTER carbonation.

o Lagered a brew at six degrees for ten weeks and then carbonated for four weeks before drinking.

o Cold Crashed a brew at 5 degrees for a week and then left it for eight weeks on the shelf to carbonate and condition.

They have ALL tasted better than ANY of the gnats pee sold as lager in the shops and pubs, so I suspect that the lagering process is only for people with more discernible taste buds than mine. :thumb:

 

[Covrich]

If the brew has turned out okay it is probably due to the ingredients and yeast rather than the process.

In the last couple of years I have:

o Lagered a brew for 12 weeks at 6 degrees.

o Cold Crashed a brew for a week at one degree AFTER carbonation.

o Lagered a brew at six degrees for ten weeks and then carbonated for four weeks before drinking.

o Cold Crashed a brew at 5 degrees for a week and then left it for eight weeks on the shelf to carbonate and condition.

They have ALL tasted better than ANY of the gnats pee sold as lager in the shops and pubs, so I suspect that the lagering process is only for people with more discernible taste buds than mine. :thumb:

Oh precsley

The idea behind the process is to speed up the long fermentation. My parents bought me all the ingredients for a good lager but It is by virtue I dont have the ease of temp control.. I have a cool bag which works well but lagering would be a little bit of a ball ache for weeks and weeks.. So I decided to adopt this method in order to kind of cheat it a little to suit my setup and it worked well.. I even managed a crash in the bag thanks to the cold weather cooling my conservatory..

Made some great pseudo lagers with neutral ale yeast but want to see how much better it can be with real yeast. I think this will be a real winner based on what I have so far.

Given most average joes yard stick is low with the stack em high piss I would have to seriously screw up a lager for the average lager drinker to turn their nose up from it..

 

[MyQul]

How are you getting on with your lager?

I came across this paper on. 'The influence of conditioning on Lager Beer Quality' If I'm reading it right it seems to suggest that malt quality and wort production and fermentation are far more important than (cold storage of) lagering a Lager beer

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/j.2050-0416.1975.tb03785.x/pdf

We've all heard of the way lager beer was stored in caves over the winter but I've never really read (or thought about) why, other than simply to lager it as a process, in and of itself. But a bit in the introduction I found interesting was that the whole reason for lagering was not to try to improve its quality but to meet sales demand in the summer (once again we see money making's influence on beer) when beers of consistant quality were difficult to produce because of a lack of mechanical refrigeration.
Again we've all heard of 'the brewing season' when brewers wouldnt brew during summer. Even today some HBer's only brew in the winter and even here on the forum I am aware of some forumites who ony brew in winter (but that may because they have other hobbies during the summer).

So I'm wondering if what the paper is proposing is true, is, now we have mechanical refridgeration, Lagering for extended periods is more a romantic notion than anything else

This it all chimes with brulosophers quick lager method. Does it mean you dont have to bother lagering a beer? Im not so sure. But what it may mean is, that if like us with our brew bags, you can cold ferment during the winter and concentrate on getting the fermentation right. So if you dont have the means to lager, like me, you dont have to worry about it so much or do something like batch lager your bottles in your domestic fridge for a week before drinking them.



The

 

[MyQul]

Having thought about it, I'm going to have a go at this tomorrow eve. I'll make a 5L test batch of pesudo pilsner. It'll be pseudo in every sense - I'll put the recipe in my brewday thread later/tomorrow so you can see what I mean.

I'll ferment it at 15C with CML kolsch yeast for one week, then ramp it up to ambient temp (about 18C) by letting it 'free rise' for another week. I'll then package it in 1L growlers. I'll then condition it for at least two weeks before putting a growler at at time (dont think MrsMQ would be happy if I filled the fridge up with beer) in my domestic fridge for 1 week to lager before tucking in