Lagering times at homebrew level

You might want to take a look at this very recent thread...
https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/horizontal-vs-vertical-fermenter-tank.639625/

 

I think your question is how long should you lager? In my own beers, I use a vertical profile, but I doubt that matters much for 2.5 and 5 gallon batches. I have found that after about 3 weeks of lagering I am satisfied. Since I am the primary audience for my homebrews, 3 weeks is where I land. Your mileage may vary.

 

Personally, I don’t lager my lagers at all, exactly. I do a cold fermentation 46-50° for 2 weeks with a day or two of warmer D rest at the end, then cold crash and keg. I figure it takes me months to get through a keg, I don’t disturb the kegs after they’re tapped, and I keep my serving fridge on the coldest setting, so they’re going to basically get lagered unintentionally. I’ve always thought my lagers were at least as good as commercial examples I’ve had. I think making a clean lager has more to do with pitching a lot of healthy yeast and fermenting cold than it does with the actual lagering phase.

 

The direct answer to your question is no. I do not believe there is any quality research on how lagering requirements for homebrew differs from commercial set-ups.

But 5 gallons is not 30 barrels of beer. The two things a commercial brewer would be looking at here, residence time and pressure on the yeast cells are pretty much absent in our world.

A typical 5 gallon keg is maybe 3 feet tall? This amounts to very little pressure on the yeast. A 30 bbl lagering tank? That is pressure. And it does not really speed up the clearing of beer if you were to reduce the height from 3 feet to what? 1 foot? It's just not anything to worry about in my mind. Lastly homebrewers have the luxury of time. If you need another week no big deal. The commercial brewer needs to make the factory as efficient as possible.

Of course, we are homebrewers and can usually find an answer looking for a problem. So go ahead and conduct some experiments.

Cheers

 

And I believe you are correct here.

Exactly, the scale that we homebrewers have when we lager our beers is very, very different from the commercial brewers - even those that lager in horizontal tanks.

Really no reason for us to 'mimic' what the commercial brewers do since our scale (e.g., aspect ratio) is so significantly different.

Cheers!

 

Even at the small commercial scale, horizontals don't make a huge difference. I have 3x 15 bbl lagering tanks. I have found no real difference in conditioning times in those vs. in my 15 bbl ccv's. The height difference of the beer is about 6 feet (lager tanks are about 3 ft. tall and CCV's are about 9 ft. tall). The main determination for me for when conditioning is done is how many yeast cells are in suspension. I don't see a faster settling time at this small of a scale. In fact, these days, I use my lagering tanks as shallow primary fermenters and I do conduct the lagering phase in the same tank. When I'm ready to filter, I just filter into another lager tank or directly into kegs. I'm currently doing an experiment with this type of fermentation where I'm fermenting the batch with 10 psi of pressure, which in theory emulates a fermenter that is 30 ft tall (3 ft. of height creates approximately 1 psi of hydrostatic pressure). I anticipate lagering time to be about 3-4 weeks.

 

Weedy, what if you made a decision to not filter. Do you think there would be an advantage to using horizontal tanks vs. vertical tanks in that situation?

Cheers!

 

Not really. I used to fine beers years ago at my last brewery and we’d get good clarity in 60 bbl conicals after a few yeast dumps and cold conditioning for a week. I have lagered for 2 months in lagering tanks (only once when we had some equipment repairs that slowed production) and the beer was still not as brite as fined beers after a week in conicals. I think the bigger difference happens on a much larger scale. I like the lager tanks for our ability to stack 3 tanks in the floor space of 2 brite tanks more than I like them for beer quality reasons.

Edit to add: When I bought the lagering tanks, I did believe our lagers would be better and condition faster. In reality, I don’t see that happening now after a couple years with using them. They do make for great marketing pics for lager fans though

 

That may be where horizontal tanks have a notable benefit (e.g., AB, Pilsner Urquell, etc.).

Cheers!