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Lagering
I want to start lagering but live in the south were the weather is up and down most of the time. I have seen people using both fridges and freezers to lager beer. Which is best and how hard is it to switch over from ales to lager?
If you have an extra fridge lying around, or know where to get one cheap; you can get an external thermostat for the cooling unit. You plug the fridge into the unit, and the unit to the wall. It will maintain a good lager temp by using a probe on the inside, if it gets too cold, it cuts power to the fridge, and vice versa for too warm.
I think that's the easiest way, unless someone has truly mastered the swamp cooler, which is just a pain in the ass.....
A chest freezer is the best option with a temp controller. I fridge might not get cold enough for lagaring at 40F or lower.
Fridge or freezer, it doesn't really matter. I think you get a little more sweaty moisture from a freezer, but it's never bothered me. I've used both and found the freezer to be better at keeping a specific temperature (i.e. turns on less often), but both were effective at lagering temps.
DT
brewchez wrote:
A chest freezer is the best option with a temp controller. I fridge might not get cold enough for lagaring at 40F or lower.
I've also been thinking of trying a lager sometime this year. 40 seems a bit low, unless I just don't know enough. Are many beers lagered at 40 and below? How long woudl that take to ferment out? I figure at least a few months.....
ricka182 wrote:
I've also been thinking of trying a lager sometime this year. 40 seems a bit low, unless I just don't know enough. Are many beers lagered at 40 and below? How long woudl that take to ferment out? I figure at least a few months.....
Well there's a difference between fermenting a lager and actually lagering. You can lager an ale if you want, it's basically just cold conditioning. The lager fermentation temperature should simply depend on which yeast strain you are using. Off the top of my head, I don't know of any lager strains that are supposed to ferment below 40 degrees.
DT
I am talking about lagering at 40F, not fermenting at 40F.
Lagering is cold storage. Its not fermentation with a lager yeast.
Fermenting is fermenting. The type of yeast (top or bottom) doesn't change that.
A chest freezer gives you a wider range of temp control. You can ferment your lager at the appriate temperature for your lager yeast. Then drop the temp to near freezing to lager if you wish.
You might be able to ferment a lager with a swamp cooler setup if you are diligent. But how will you lager it afterwards?
As I thought.......still need to read more.......
I can get an upright freezer for $50 / obo from this guy at my work. That could be used for lagering,provided there was some sort of temp controller attached, correct?....
Yes.....I have a chest freezer for my kegerator and got a regular analog controller for like $50........that way I can have beer on tap and use it to lager beers at the same time......it doesn't even have to be in a carboy.....just transfer to the keg after fermentation purge the headspace with CO2 and let it lager till I'm ready to carb it up.......I do my fermenting in a fridge with temperature controller, it allows me to ferment in one thing and lager in another so I don't have wait on brewing my next beer........also I have my temperature controlled bathroom to do my ales in.....
I thought I read that fermenting a lager was best between 50-55 degrees. Then I guess after fermentation to lager the beer around 40 degrees. I keep my kegerator around 38 degrees. And it is getting close to the 50-55 degree mark in my basement where I brew. So I should be able to ferment in a carboy as usual and after 2 weeks or something, keg and put in the fridge.
All this talk around here has me interested in trying to lager while temperatures are already low.