Lagering Options??

[JackoNZ]

I got my schwarzbier down on Saturday, pitched 2 packs of saf-23 at 22c and sat the fermenter in the bath with cold water and a wet towel wrapped around. Overnight it had dropped to 14c and is now around 12-14 and appears to be bubbling away nicely.

I have no way of lagering down to 2c so wondering what the best way is to deal with this and also if I need to do a diacetyl rest? I've read that bringing the temp up to 18-20 about 3/4 the way through fermenting for 3 days should clear up any diacetyl. Does this sound like a good idea?

Back to lagering, should I rack to secondary and then try and keep as cold as possible for a couple of weeks then prime or just prime and bottle from primary and store the bottles cool? What happens if you prime then store cool, does the beer carbonate ok?

[denimglen]

You'll want to do a diacetyl rest with that. What you said is pretty much it.

No fridge to lager in? Just get it as cold as possible. The beer will actually still 'lager' at warmer temperatures, and will apparently mature faster at warmer temps. There's some more info on it in the lager section at www.howtobrew.com.

[JackoNZ]

No spare fridge mate, might just try keeping it in the bath with cold water and keep swapping ice bottles. Thanks for the link, forgot about that, will go through it again.

[MrC]

I had a similar situation with a Pilsner last year. I fermented (in a fermenter) in the bath at 12C for two weeks, then let the temp raise to 15-16C for 2 days for a diacetyl rest, then racked to secondary (so I could re-use the yeast that day), then as cool as I could get it (10-12C) for another two weeks.

The beer was good, clear and carbonated just fine in the bottle. It's certainly not as good as having decent fermentation temp control but it allows me to brew the "odd" lager every now and then.

[JackoNZ]

Cheers Mr C. Sounds like what I'll be doing. Now I have the second fermenter I guess I can bulk prime after the lager phase too. Would you rack again when priming or just add the priming sugar directly to the fermenter that I lagered in and stir it in?

[MrC]

I racked again into a bottling bucket. Secondary was a glass carboy and I always bottle from a standard Brewcraft plastic fermenter with the bottling attachment, that's why I racked again for bottling.

[James P]

I found the coldest part of the house was in the garage. I had a tub with with water and the fermenter sitting in it, with frozen bottles being swapped out every day (if not morning and night). Wet towel over top which managed to keep it down to 5C when the ambient temperature was closer to 20. Now our ambient temp is more like 8C.

Got sick of the regime and bought a secondhand fridge. Then a freezer and temp control. Now I have a whiteware addiction....