I just transferred my Oktoberfest beer into the keg. ( well my sons Oktoberfest). We brewed it on August 13, it’s been in the primary and I did a 7 day d- rest, then dropped the temp a few deg a day until I was at about 33 deg f beer temp. Then, mostly out of curiousity I added a little gelatin ( about 3 grams for the 5 gal, which I think is on the low end of the how to brew book recommendations). I let that work for two days at the 33-34 deg beer temp before transfer to the keg today. The beer smells and looks great,
Right now I have it in the keezer with 13 psi of gas on it, temp is 38 deg. I am a little unsure what I should be doing… Beersmith says age for 30 days at 60 deg. I can certainly take it out of the freezer and let it sit in the basement … What do you guys do with a lager ? We are not in a big rush for it so i would like to take whatever steps I can to improve , or at least not degrade the beer.
Thanks, I have plenty of room so I will let it sit. How long would you let it sit to be at its best ? I will also leave the gas on it unless there is a reason I should not.
Thanks, I will leave it alone…at least until my Irish red is gone. I was just curious if it made any difference if it aged while carbonated or not. I guess it will take a couple of weeks to carb at that pressure and temp anyway.
The longer you lager/age it the clearer it will get. It will be good early but may have a bit of yeast bite which is more noticeable in lagers IMO. Like @sneezles61 says just sample it daily and by the end of October it will be gone anyway.
Not sure why you’d want to age it at room temp for 30 days… condition it on gas at lager temps. Definitely don’t hesitate to sample at will! I’m currently drinking my marzen brewed in 2016. So good!
Maybe they figure if you don’t have room in your keggorater to just lager it at cellar temps which is perfectly fine. Many people have single towers. I lager cold and cellar temp just need to let it age a bit longer or not. Your beer you make the rules.
It’s because it’s a default setting in Beersmith. Brewers need to understand that beersmith assumes you know how to brew and is simply a database function to do math and maintain recipes. BEERSMITH DOES NOT TEACH YOU HOW TO BREW.
HOLY MOLY… Do what you want… Its your brew after all… There as many ideas as there are great peeps here on this forum… You only have what you have to work with, so best see what you can brew and evaluate your own brew yourself… Sneezles61
Great big hugs and kisses!!
Oops, sorry for the dumb questions. Never brewed a lager before and just started brewing 6 months ago so I figured I would ask and try to get an idea of what others typically do.
No such thing as a dumb question and that’s how we learn. We’ve all been there. Just many people think Beersmith is a program to teach you to brew. It’s not. It has default settings which are grossly inaccurate as the expectation is that you know what to do.
Lagering you Ofest at 32°-33° for about 6 weeks should be just about right. Ofest is my favorite beer, getting ready to sample mine.
Thank you for the input. you are right regarding Beersmith, I guess when I see it prints out brew steps for the recipe entered, I assumed the last few bullet points regarding bottling/kegging were also relative to the input recipe and beer type selected. my mistake.
I was a little confused by some of the default data in BS2 when I first got it too. Even more confused by Brunwater. I thought OK this looks complicated but all I need to know is where are the cells that tell me what to do???
There’s a lot of great functionality built into both those tools but only if we use them correctly and enter good data. BS2 is mainly a process tool. I use it to build and archive recipes, organize, track & time my process on brew day and log data on fermentation, tasting notes, etc. Works great for me.
As to dumb questions search this database for some of the ones I had on water chemistry a few years ago! This forum has made me the brewer I am. Opinions vary as to whether that’s a good or bad thing…haha
Sneezles61