Help: My First Lager

1) Use foil. An airlock will prevent oxygen from entering, but you want O2 to get in.
2) I would make the starter in time for it to be finished and cold crashed prior to brew day. Do you know how big a starter you'll need? (Stepped starters are common for lagers, in order to get an adequate pitch rate.)
3) I start my lager fermentations a couple of degrees lower than the temperature I ulitimately want to ferment at. I do not believe starting at higher temps is a best practice. I do believe it's a crutch that shouldn't be necessary.
4) Your lagering period will serve as secondary. And you'll do that after any diacetyl rest.

 

1. Use a piece of foil on the top of the flask, no need for an airlock.
   
2. Depends on how much yeast you need, if you need to step it up, then you'll need a good few days to build it, crash it, and build it up again. Chances are you'll need atleast a week, IMO. Keep it on the plate until it's fermented, and then crash in the fridge.
   
3. It's personal preference, but I would have the starter crashed and decanted, and wouldn't pitch the spent wort into my beer. You'll need a large starter, and that will be alot of "junk" in there. I would start cooler and allow it to rise to fermentation temp, and then hold it there. Pitch the starter around the same temp as the wort.
4. If you bottle, you can move it to secondary if you'd like. It will help clear it, and you can lager it in the carboy/bucket for the time being. Some people lager on the yeast and it comes out just fine. If you keg it, I would rack to the keg and lager in the keg until ready to serve.

 

I just made my first lager two weeks ago, and it's coming along nicely. It's an Oktoberfest split between 2206 and 2124 yeasts. I used foil on the flasks, and did a 2 step starter following the guidelines in VikeMan's BrewCipher spreadsheet. I did the first step a week before brew day. That gave enough time for both steps to ferment out fully and cold crash.

I chilled the wort to 45 overnight in my chest freezer, then pitched early in the morning and raised to 50. Fermentation began in less than 12 hours. I used oxygen instead of just aeration, and I'm sure that helped as well.

Checked gravity at 10 days. 2124 was 75% done, so I pulled it from the freezer for diacetyl rest at 66. 2206 took three more days to get there, and I pulled it yesterday. I plan to leave both at 66 for another week, rack to secondary, and put back in the freezer. I've read that I could cold crash after this time, but I'll probably ramp down 5 degrees per day until it's near freezing temp.

Don't worry about any nasty rotten egg smells you may get from the fermenting beer. That's normal for lager yeast.

 

Good advice, only add I have is to use O2 before pitching. Some nutrients added before the end of the boil does not hurt.

 

I'm going to be brewing my first lager later this month & have some questions about the yeast starter. This is my first attempt at a yeast starter as well (please bear with me, I'm a novice):

1. I've read pros and cons of using either a stopper & air lock or simply a piece of tin foil on my Erlenmeyer flask. I understand that oxygen is not necessarily a bad thing for the starter, however, an airlock would keep any oxygen from entering?

Foil, as said above

2. How long do I need to let the yeast starter go prior to my brew? A day, 2 days, a week? Do I need to keep it on the stir plate that entire time? Do I chill the starter?

I find that a lot of lager yeasts are slow to ferment on a starter and slow to crash out so that you can decant the beer from the yeast after placing it in the fridge. 3 or 4 days for each should be set aside before brew day. Minimum? 2 days each!

3. Any tips for pitching come brew day & the lagering process in general? Should I start the fermentation at a slightly higher temperature to kickstart the yeast, or does the yeast starter make this unnecessary?

Overpitch. It's better than under pitching. Pitch at around 50-53F and let the beer warm up to 55F if possible for fermentation.


4. If I do a secondary fermentation (is this recommended?), do I do this prior to or after the diactyl rest?

No secondary needed. You may want to do a cold crash. If you do, remember that the vacuum will draw liquid from an airlock or bubbler into the beer. Use foil. This is a great way to start your lagering condition too.

Thanks in advance for helping a newb.

 

It took me nearly a week to step up my lager starter. Usually I step up a starter twice for ales, but for the lager I did it four times, and used more wort on steps 3 and 4 (assumed there would be more cells by the third and fourth steps, and would therefore require more wort; steps 3 and 4 each had 4 liters of 1.040 wort). I am not certain the exact cell count I pitched. However, extrapolating from my ale starters, I don't think under-pitching will be an issue for me on this beer. Anybody well familiar with lager starters feel free to comment.

 

Perfectly legit.

Although, at the risk of needlessly confusing things, I will add that I believe it is not necessary to slowly lower the temp before lagering. I wrote to White Labs at one point to ask about this, and the response was, in essence, if you've hit your FG and performed a d-rest, you can lower the temp as quickly as your equipment allows. A minor point ...

 

Based on my experience, I agree with what White Labs told you. Also, keep in mind that putting a carboy into a fridge doesn't actually drop drop the temperature all that rapidly. (If it did, a lot of us would chill our post-boil wort that way.)

 

[QUOTE="FATC1TY, post: 2490123, member: 659406"If you bottle, you can move it to secondary if you'd like. It will help clear it, and you can lager it in the carboy/bucket for the time being. Some people lager on the yeast and it comes out just fine. If you keg it, I would rack to the keg and lager in the keg until ready to serve.
[/QUOTE]

Alternatively, I have had great success with moving beer to bottles after the d-rest, priming for 3 weeks, and then lagering in the bottle for a while. Lagering = storage; it doesn't have to occur before bottling.