Headspace and Lagering

So I have search and read a lot of conflicting opinions, so I thought I might just try and settle it with my own question for my situation.

I made a BIAB Maibock 3.5 gals (3 hydro samples taken) - Last night I racked it from the bucket to my 5 gal betterbottle.

Is that too much headspace?

I will only be doing a short lager, bottling the first weekend of May.

Some say it doesn’t matter too much, some say no headspace at all. :blah:
At this point I am hoping it’s fine, I don’t really want to buy a 3 gal BB and rack the beer again.

[quote=“ibeentired”]So I have search and read a lot of conflicting opinions, so I thought I might just try and settle it with my own question for my situation.

I made a BIAB Maibock 3.5 gals (3 hydro samples taken) - Last night I racked it from the bucket to my 5 gal betterbottle.

Is that too much headspace?

I will only be doing a short lager, bottling the first weekend of May.

Some say it doesn’t matter too much, some say no headspace at all. :blah:
At this point I am hoping it’s fine, I don’t really want to buy a 3 gal BB and rack the beer again.[/quote]

Do you have or could you borrow a CO2 tank? You could just blast it real quick and lay down a CO2 blanket that will protect it from O2 (which I think is the only reason one would be worried about headspace). If thats not possible, and its cold/lagering right now, maybe consider warming it up to 50 or so and some CO2 will be driven out of the solution and provide a blanket, then cool it back down with the airlock on.

The CO2 blast is a good idea if possible. Sounds like you are going to test it out for us though if you can’t.

Not that this helps you now but I try to avoid this and for my small batches I’ve started fermenting them in five gallon carboys and just leaving them on there without disturbing or opening them up if I want to age them or lager them for a bit. I’m confident in my yeast management that I’ll reach final gravity so I just let it ride until it’s time to come out. Other than that I do have a few three gallon better bottles that are great for this. Could buy one now and have it for later…

I kind of like BIAB so in the future I’ll probably get a 3 gal BB to have.

Unfortunately I don’t have access to C02 so I might just have to see what happens. This is getting an ambient basement lager (no fridge), so I am hoping a little CO2 will be made.

Thanks for the info. I am not expecting a lot from this Maibock, not having lagering temp control and missing some gravity with my slipshod BIAB process. I just wanted to try a lager for the heck of it. :?

A buddy made northern brewers miabock last winter; fermented in the basement and lagered in the corner around cement walls and on the cement floor in the basement. Turned out pretty tasty. Sure it will be more than drinkable.

This is a non issue most breweries do open fermentations.

Cool, cool, cool.

Like with most of my posts RDWHAHB would have worked.

It’s my own recipe (swiping bits and pieces from other people’s) and so far it’s tastes okay for early samples.

Thanks for the replies.

The conflicting opinions could come from this: The beer goes into the 5 gallon BB and leaves 2 gallons worth of headspace. At that point, the beer is exposed to some air. You placed an airlock on the BB (I assume) and you might eventually see that there is positive pressure in the airlock and you would reach the conclusion that the beer released some CO2 and filled that headspace with CO2 and expelled all of the air… which is good. All of that sounds good except… how much exposure to air did the beer have while waiting for the headspace to fill with CO2. You might envision that the first amounts of CO2 were resting at the very top of the beer, thus protecting it and from that point forward, everything released by the airlock would be air. Until there was no air and eventually CO2 would be released and by that point, all is good. My experienced but uneducated opinion… no worries. Cheers and please report back and let us know how the Maibock come out.

Exactly.
Some opinions were that when racking the beer some of the CO2 would be released from the beer and that would create enough of a “bed” for the beer to be protected.

I don’t know if there is any validity to that, but after the fact that I already moved it and there doesn’t seem to be a real hard and fast rule, I’ll just hope for the best.

I suppose if I was doing a real extended lager I would be more concerned.

I am excited to try it. I do like me some Maibock in the spring.