Matt and Kyle will be picking up a lagering fridge tomorrow morning. It's a 72 cu ft industrial refirgerator/freezer. They should arrive at the brew house around 1230-1:00,
I see Mike and Jim are brewing, but we could probably use a two or three more people to assist unloading and moving it into place. Not too many people, just a few. Please stop by the brewhouse if you have some spare time.
We just really upped our brew game with this thing. Super excited to get it up and running!!!
that is freaking awesome news
"Give a man a beer, and he will waste an hour. Teach a man to brew, and he will waste a lifetime!" Bill Owen
I can show up to help.
I have been appointed Lager Czar and will be tasked with organizing the lager fridge and dispensing lager justice...and by that I mean doing my best to educate members on lagering best practices and ensuring proper and fair usage of our limited lager space. Sometime this weekend I will stop in and determine the capacity of the fridge in carboys, what sort of internal shelving or whatever may be needed to maximize this capacity. I will then set about a numbering system designating these spaces, these spaces will then be reservable on a 3-4 week basis, it's my ultimate goal to get this reservation system online like our brew bay system, but for now it may be a piece of paper or a dry erase board. I love brewing and drinking lagers, I think their simplicity, subtelty, and elegance is incredibly difficult to capture as a brewer and simply a joy to drink. I want to share my love for lagers and promote their brewing in the club, which is why I took on this responsibility. And now some general lager notes/guidelines I would like to propose:
1. Lager means "to store" in German, it refers to the act of cold conditioning beers in near freezing conditions as found in the caves of Bavaria in the winter. Lager Yeast is the yeast used to ferment these beers at colder temps, usually about 48-52 degrees depending on the yeast strain. You'll notice that the proper fermenting temp of 48-52 degrees is well above freezing...this means that a lager fermenting chamber is too warm to actually LAGER your beer. That is why you should not keep your beer in the fridge any longer than it takes to ferment. What you should do is cold crash in one of the regular fridges that ARE near freezing for a day or two, this will really help with clarity, then rack in to a keg, and then store that keg in near freezing conditions for a few more weeks/months. A personal keezer is really the best spot for such an endeavor if you want best results, nothing we own as a club is suitable for the actual cold storage part of lagering, except the keezer, but we need beers ready to drink in there, not people filling it up with beers not to drink.
2. There will be a limit of 4 weeks maximum per reservation per space. This is the time it takes to ferment a lager if you pitched the appropriate amount of yeast, and I hope you did because that is critical to lager brewing. Perhaps the single most important thing about lager brewing is pitching the correct amount of yeast. Use Mr. Malty to determine this. I prefer dry yeast. It makes lager brewing so much simpler not having to do starters. Back to the limit...The strictness with which the 4 week limit will be enforced will be in direct proportion to the demand for space. If it's booked solid, be a good brother/sister and get your beer out so others can use the facilities, it's about common courtesy. If the fridge is half empty and you let it go an extra week because you couldn't make it in to cold crash...no harm, no foul. If your doppelbock didn't finish in 4 weeks...keep it rolling if you need to for a few more days as long as there is available space. It would probably be a good idea to put it in the regular ferm room at that point and try a DMS rest with it anyway, get those yeast rolling again. The time limit is about being considerate and sharing our communal resources, don't reserve half the fridge for 12 weeks...just be cool about it.
3. There may be a need to require Better Bottles to ferment in the lager fridge, as they are considerably lighter than glass and will be easier on the shelving system. Also, with the Better Bottles, a bung with rubber tubing going to a blowoff would be preferable to standard airlock, like our current lager fridge requires, this would allow for shorter shelving and would mean more possible carboys could fit.
I think that just about covers it...there may be a need to enact a limit on how many lagers a brewer can get in there at one time...but I don't see that as necessary just yet. Just a few common sense guidelines and tips to help demystify lager brewing, make it a bit more approachable and help everyone get the most out of it.
Fantastic news! Hugh will be with me today, he's young, strong and can help with the unloading/moving.
www.singingboysbrewing.com
Joe, that all sounds great. Thank you for organizing it - it is deeply appreciated!
It would be great to also come up with a system for lagering post-fermentation. Maybe the current lager fermentation fridge could be used for that - set at 35F. Currently, it looks like people are using the fridges or the keezer for that.
From what I understand, many lager brewers ferment for three to four weeks at 50F, do a quick diacytl rest at ale temps (like in our ferm room), then another 3 or 4 weeks lagering in the low 30s.
www.singingboysbrewing.com
Jim, thanks, and you are exactly correct. I solved the last part of cold storing at near freezing by getting a keezer myself. There were thoughts of having the old lager fridge as a warmer kolsch temp, maybe we'd be better served dropping to the low 30's as an aging chamber.
So if I don't have a kegerator I can't make lagers? We need more fridge space at 32f not a bigger lagering fridge . Can't we switch the old layering fridge to 32f? Please? It takes me two months or more just to get 48hr of fridge space right now. Typically the lagering stage takes way longer than fermentation anyways so it doesn't make sense to have a massive fridge at 50f and nothing at 32
<p>Sorry about the rant it's just spending more money on a lagering fridge doesn't fix the problem. I still can't make lagers without space to actually lager my beer. I don't see why nobody realizes how much more we need fridge space than lagering space. </p>
We need both lagering space and lager fermenting space, the allocation of our resources to each is currently being debated, and your opinion is noted. Rest assured there will be an increase in both lagering and lager fermenting space. The club has existed for years now without ever having a proper lager aging facility and between the regular refrigerators and other solutions members have found ways to brew award winning lagers, the addition of more refrigerated space only improves this regardless of the temperature it is set at.
Joe, thanks for taking this on. I can't wait to try some lagers!
I have to disagree with most of your idea so far. I see more value and space in having the old lager fridge set at fermentation temperatures, and the new one close to 32 deg. for long-term lagering and cold crashing of ales.
FYI when setting the new one up, we found that it has enough space for roughly 10 fermenting vessels on the bottom and 8 on the top. The shelves were set to accommodate a 6 gallon carboy and airlock (the tallest fermenting vessel, I believe) on both the bottom and top. The top middle section has a plastic part that hangs down, and doesnt allow for a keg/carboy to be fit there. I was planning on using this for yeast bank.
Thanks to everyone who is working on this! And thanks to the leadership for making this happen! Pilsners are my favorite type of beer and I'm exicted to be able to improve my skills with this set up. I'd like to support the idea that it might be better to have more space for 35 degree longterm lagering, and use the old one for the 50 degree fermentations.
What is the opinion on a scheduled rotation of temps? As in, new fridge would be 50 for 3 weeks to allow for fermentaiton. And then it gets turned down to 35 for 6 weeks. And then repeat with a new set of carboys
I agree with Matt and Adam to keep the old lagering fridge at 50 and use the new one for long term lagering and cold crashing ales.
"Give a man a beer, and he will waste an hour. Teach a man to brew, and he will waste a lifetime!" Bill Owen
I concede defeat and see the value in using it as a cold crash/ lagering chamber as opposed to the fermenting chamber I was hoping for. Using it as a cold crash/lager chamber will likely yield the most usefullness to the most people, and so it is clearly the right choice. A few things:
1. What is the current temp? I haven't been able to make it to the brewhouse yet to see it. If cold crashing and lagering are the goals round about 36 is what we need. Do we know how wide the cycles are on it? if we set it lower will stuff freeze when it hits the low part of the cycle? I gotta get in there and look up the model number and look up the manual and figure that out. If anyone is around and feels like looking any of that up for me, thank you.
2. I would like to commandeer the dry erase board we have floating around for the purpose of making a sign in board, hopefully I can get to this on Sunday. Sign your beer in with your name/date in / vessel type. If you have more than 1 then number them. Still going to impose 4 week limits if space gets tight. Be cool and share what we have...This seems to me like the easiest and most pain free way to do it. I would like to tape out spaces, and create the online reservations for them, but I don't think my desire for rigid organization of this will mesh well with the chaos that is CHAOS, plus I foresee a high turnaround with people cold crashing for only a day or two. It's more trouble than it's worth, both to create it and enforce it. Sign your stuff in, erase it on your way out.
3. Matt, thanks for looking in to the capacity. Mike had mentioned elsewhere that we could fit more kegs on the bottom. I think we should definitely encourage the use of kegs on the floor as that would really help maximize space.
4. Can the shelf racks hold up the weight we need them to? do we need to reinforce them or anything? I think we should allow only better bottles on the racks to help keep weight down. That seems like a good common sense thing to me as having a glass carboy fall on you when you open the door might be very detrimental to the ratio of your blood in you vs. on the floor. Maybe kegs on most of the floor and a space or two on the floor for glass carboy cold crashing.
Joe:
1) We still have the old fridge we can set at 50 degrees for lager fermentation. Since the fermentation time of a typical lager is shorter than the lagering time, I think this will do just fine as we rotate lagers from the smaller capacity fermentation fridge to diacetyly rest in the ferm room than into the jumbo freezer.
3) Of the three freezer "bays", I split each of them into 2 sections using the shelves that came with the unit. The bottom section has enough room for 4 "things" of beer with headspace (so kegs, 6 gallon carboys with airlocks, and buckets will fit), so that gives us at least 12 spaces (11, if we decide to put a tank in there, and more if we limit it to keg only). The top sections have clearance to fit a bucket, but not a keg or a 6 gallon carboy and airlock. I can send you a picture with dimensions if you want tonight.
James, kegs fit on the top level on the sides (but not in the middle).
I was in the brewhouse this morning (brewing a best bitter) and plugged the new fridge in. When I left, it had cooled down to the low 40s. Huzzah!
www.singingboysbrewing.com
Kyle that's good news.
I tried looking up the weight capacity of the shelves but didn't get very far without a part number. I'll try to see if i can get my hands on a part number tonight to check
Glad its going to be used for cold crashing/lagering instead of fermentation. Can't wait to finally make a lager! Couldn't do it before bc there was no space at lagering temperatures
Is anyone open to sharing some recipes? I'd made 3 lagers now, and 2 were ok and one was awful. I had an american lager someone made at the club (can't remember thier name, of course) and it was amazing. I would love good pils recipie. A nice mild one like warsteiner.
In my limited experience, pilsners are the most obnoxiously hard to make of the bunch.
Icehouse and I have had the best luck in our inexperience making schwarzbiers. A mild black lager that uses some sort of debittered/dehusked black malt and some mid-range caramel malt as its specialty grains. Use whatever blend of 2-row and munich malt makes you happy.
@krisblouch My first lager was also terrible. I left it in the keg for 6 months (in the home beerfridge) and it ended up tasting decent.
not very descriptive, i know, but there's hope if you havn't thrown them out.
Im probably doing a vienna lager this weekend or as soon as I can get a massive-enough starter made up.
I recommend checking the Mr. Malty website and seeing how many packets of saflager 34/70. Dry yeast makes lagers so much easier.
There's Danstar and a few other dry lager yeasts, I prefer 34/70 for everything from helles to doppelbock. No starter, no rehydrating. Dunk the packets in sanitizer, sprinkle them in and aerate. Watch it go.
Dry yeast is especially helpful when doing doppelbocks and other big lagers, 4 packets of yeast is a lot less wasteful than having to add a gallon and a half starter.
Oh and the fridge was only at 43 today so I turned the dial up a bit to try and cool it down a little more towards lagering temps (35ish F)
Excellent, thank you.
In honor of our new fridge, I decided to put one of my beers on tap.
AND OH MY GOOOOODD it's an Icehouse Clone!
I missed in the yeast character (a little too spicy), nose (smells too much like corn), and the IBU (I got 5 IBU, and Icehouse I believe has 10-15), but it's an American adjunct light lager that's surprisingly not terrible.