Vienna Lager Yeast

[dlowe1992]

You shouldn't be afraid to brew lager yeasts at "ale" temperatures, the Frohberg group of lager yeasts (which includes all the main commercial ones) are pretty temperature tolerant. There's an epic thread on the subject here :
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/warm-fermented-lager-thread.592169/

I wouldn't necessarily do it for a competition, but for ordinary drinking ale-temperature lager yeast are fine - things like 34/70 and WLP800.
I wouldn't use Novalager for lager, the consensus is that it works in cold IPA but is just too fruity for lager.

The thing about Viennas is that traditionally they had rather low attenuation, like <70% - they would traditionally go from about 1.053 OG (so a bit higher than you have) down to only about 1.018. I know you've the dextrin in there to help mouthfeel, but do do what you can to keep attenuation down. WLP820 or WLP920 are the ideal yeast for that kind of attenuation.

Cheers @Northern_Brewer, that’s a really interesting read. I’ve avoided lagers up to press (this Vienna lager / hybrid thing excepted) due to fern temps.

May alter that with summer coming up!

I didn’t know that about viennas finishing up quite high. Hoping I’ll have some body in this. I binned off the protein test in the end for fear of killing off any head retention. Gave it an hour at 67 and another 20 mins at 72 so hoping that and the dextrin should help…

It’s sitting at the lower end of the temp range for FIVE so maybe that will help in keeping attenuation down, though I doubt it

 

[Northern_Brewer]

It’s sitting at the lower end of the temp range for FIVE so maybe that will help in keeping attenuation down, though I doubt it

That shouldn't make too much difference I'm afraid, that would be my main worry about using a US-05-type yeast is that attenuation will be too high.

The other thing I meant to say is that historically the Viennese would have used mostly Saaz and Slovenian hops - not that German hops are "wrong", just less likely. A more pressing problem is the weather problems in recent European harvests - 2022 was a disaster, particularly in Germany, particularly for the traditional landraces, and 2023 was merely "less bad" - so you want to watch the vintages if you're using hops from central Europe.

One could also debate the use of high-alpha hops like Magnum for bittering, but that's another argument!

 

[fluketamer]

northern brewer beat me to posting the warm fermented lager thread.

i have only had luck fermenting 34/70 warm. the other yeast will make lager at warm temps but they are not nearly as clean