Beer Forum

I am going to take my first attempt at brewing a lager this weekend. I have temp control and I am just wondering if there are any other considerations or differences with a lager.

CPADRE wrote:I am going to take my first attempt at brewing a lager this weekend. I have temp control and I am just wondering if there are any other considerations or differences with a lager.

Pitch plenty of yeast! And do a starter! Aerate the heck out of the wort before you pitch. My first lager fizzled out during ferment. The yeast quit on me. I ended up dumping the whole batch. I later learned I needed a starter and didn't have enough aeration.

Listen to the Brewstrong podcast on this. Use Mrmalty.com to determine your yeast starter size, and like you said temp control.

Patience. The extra waiting can be really, really hard.

Pitch a lot of healthy yeast as cool as possible. Close to 50 deg as you can. Aerate heavily and keep the ferment around 50 deg for 10-12 days depending on the gravity and fermentation progress. As the krausen starts to drop, raise the temps a few deg per day to keep the yeast active. Be sure to complete a full diacetyl rest at 65-70 deg for 2-3 days before packaging. Another crucial lager tip is to use a fairly strong boil for 90 min to try to get rid of as much DMS as possible.

brewinhard wrote:. . . . use a fairly strong boil for 90 min to try to get rid of as much DMS as possible.

Is this necessary for extract based lagers?

I've been boiling 60 under the assumption that extract has already been boiled once and a bunch of DMS has already been driven off.

As far as I understand it, a 90 min. boil is NOT necessary for extract based lagers using pilsen DME/LME for fermentables.