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Bottling a Lager
My first lager seems to be going extremely well. I transferred it over to the secondary yesterday and took a quick taste - it is extremely crisp and clean. Needless to say, I'm very excited about this and the thought of waiting another 3 - 4 weeks before I open it again is painful.
But that's not the purpose of this thread...
I was told that during the secondary process I should reduce the temperature of the storage container for the lager to 35 - 40 degrees. If I do this, however, won't this cause all the yeast to settle to bottom of the carboy?
When move to bottling, I'll obviously want to have a little yeast left in suspension in order to properly carbonate the bottles. Will keeping the temp this low for this long give me problems with bottling? Should I add a little yeast to the bottling process?
I but a lager in the bottle 19 days ago and it has been very slow to finish. I checked today and it has finally got enough sediment on the bottom of the bottle that you can not see through it. All the ales that I have done have only taken about 2 weeks to finish.
I was thinking that there was not enough residual yeast in suspension to do the carbonation. I checked with another forum and a local brew shop to see what to do just in case it does not carbonate. About the only thing to do is to add yeast back into it from a starter or from the trub of a similar yeast. They recommended about 1 cc of starter per bottle by syringe. I have the yeast but I am going to give it another several days as is to see if it is carbonating enough without adding more yeast.
As far as the temp goes, I lagered mine at about 46 -50 degrees. Near the end it might have got up to about 52 or so. I would think that 35-40 might be to cold but I guess it would probably depend on what kind of yeast it is and what the manufacturer recommends for an optimum temp.
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