1st Lager AG "Fritz's Fuel"

[adm]

I'm off and running on my first lager brewday. Just waiting for the mash tun to pre-heat.

42L of 1053 OG Lager (or thereabouts...)

10Kg Lager Malt
0.5Kg Munich Malt
0.265kg Melanoidin Malt
90 min mash at 65C planned

Hops still undecided....but might end up being Pacific Gem for bittering and Saaz for flavour & aroma

[adm]

My mash is on. Here's a few pics so far.



First....the yeast starter - this was originally a 3L starter. As you can see, it started going mental and I had to fit a blow off tube to it. As of this morning, there's a good half inch of pure yeast at the bottom of the glass.....pity I can't chuck it into the brew but it's been uncovered all night. I did slow it down yesterday afternoon by sitting it in the fridge for a few hours to let the yeast settle out. Then I tipped out the bulk of the starter wort and added another 2L of fresh wort to the flask. Of course it all kicked off again right away. I wasn't really prepared for lager yeast to be quite this active at room temperature, but it shouldn't have been a surprise.


Now back to normality. Here's the grain bill. Twice as good as normal. I'm upping the brew length to 42L today, so there's 10.75Kg of grain here.


Which with a 2.5L/Kg ratio completely fills my mash tun!


Temperature OK


And pH at about 5.2 looks good too.

That's all for now.....off to sort out what hops I can use...

[edit1now]

Have a good one!

[adm]

The mash is just about done now. It's only dropped 0.1C throughout 80 mins.

I think I'm going to go with the following hop schedule (mainly because I don't have enough Saaz)

Hallertauer Mittelfruh 3.9% 40g FWH
Perle 6.9% 40g FWH
Czech Saaz 3.5% 100g 15 minutes
Czech Saaz 2.8% 62g Steep

This should come out about 37 IBU, and hopefully the Perle should beef up the IBUs without changing the taste too much. It also reduces the amount of hop material a bit.

[Robdog]

Good luck Alasdair ill follow this with interest.

Your an early riser ive only just got my mash on lol.

[arturobandini]

Perle sounds like an ideal choice given your hop situation adm. How long is your boil? I doubt you'll get much if any flavour off it and a lot of people have brewed all Perle Lager. Saaz is a delicious little number and once I can Lager properly, missed the free boat in winter, I'll be looking at doing something like Aleman's Bohemian Pilsner. Good luck with it, I'm sure it'll come out very tasty.

[Bopper]

Ive brewed so many lagers, because no one likes ale in the household, i only brew ale if requested by one of my friends! Lager yeast does have a tendency to take off like "diarrhea with daps on" at room temp....I always pitch lager yeast at room temp and leave for a while to get a good fermation going....Whats your yeast??? I hope it turns out good!

Richard

[adm]

Here's the rest of the story...


Here's the mash tun after 90 mins.


First runnings


Coming to the boil


Saaz hops for flavour and aroma additions.

In the end, I went with 60g Perle for bittering, 100g of Saaz for flavour and 62g of Saaz for aroma. It certainly smelled good!


Still quite full...


Set up ready to run off


Running off into the FV with splash aeration


What came out at the other end was 38L of 1062 wort. Ooops - so I diluted it back to the original amount of 42L and ended up at 1056. Good enough for me. It's more hazy than normal for me as when I went to add the protafloc, I didn't have any!


Here we are after a bit of extra aeration


And into the fridge. I've set it for 11C now, but it'll take a while to get down there.

Well, that was fun. It's a bit more work with my setup to do a bigger brew length with batch sparging as it needs 3 batches. I might look into fly sparging for bigger batches instead. I've also found out I can't really lift an FV with 42L of beer in it safely. I was going to use a glass carboy originally, but chickened out as I thought it would be just too dangerous heaving that about.

[Bopper]

Some good pics! Your clarity will be ok, when lagered, as you never had any copper finings....You will have to post, when its all under tap and barrel!


Richard

[Bionicmunky]

Looking good ADM.

Are those hops in the top of your Fermigerator?

[Bionicmunky]

Well, that was fun. It's a bit more work with my setup to do a bigger brew length with batch sparging as it needs 3 batches. I might look into fly sparging for bigger batches instead. I've also found out I can't really lift an FV with 42L of beer in it safely. I was going to use a glass carboy originally, but chickened out as I thought it would be just too dangerous heaving that about.

This is why I went for a 60L NO Thermobox when I had the chance, mail the nice french lady, she'll sort you out eventually. plus you'd prolly get a full ROI if you wanted to sell you current one on.

As for shifting 42L of full FV it hurts doesn't it. but you have a pump. Put the FV into the fridge/FV cupboard then fill. You've got a big enough fridge to have the FV above corny height. You've also got all summer to move your insulated cupboard to the top of the workbench .

[adm]

Looking good ADM.

Are those hops in the top of your Fermigerator?

Yes they are......I've been collecting

I like the word "Fermigerator"...you should trademark that!

[adm]

Well, that was fun. It's a bit more work with my setup to do a bigger brew length with batch sparging as it needs 3 batches. I might look into fly sparging for bigger batches instead. I've also found out I can't really lift an FV with 42L of beer in it safely. I was going to use a glass carboy originally, but chickened out as I thought it would be just too dangerous heaving that about.

This is why I went for a 60L NO Thermobox when I had the chance, mail the nice french lady, she'll sort you out eventually. plus you'd prolly get a full ROI if you wanted to sell you current one on.

As for shifting 42L of full FV it hurts doesn't it. but you have a pump. Put the FV into the fridge/FV cupboard then fill. You've got a big enough fridge to have the FV above corny height. You've also got all summer to move your insulated cupboard to the top of the workbench .

Some good points there John!

I did originally think about a 60L thermobox....and in hindsight would probably have got one.......but the 38L one with 11Kg of wet grain and a few litres of leftover wort in it is a heavy enough bastard to lift around to empty.

I'm committed to cornies for dispensing, so my brew length is going to be in multiples of 19l plus splash room, and now I know I can get 42L at 1056 I'll stick with that size for now. Next upgrade sizewise should be to a barrel! Or maybe a 100L single tier system with pivot suspension for the vessels so i could empty them into a wheelbarrow easily

I did think about putting the FV in the fridge first and pumping to that, but I wanted to change my brewday as little as possible at first. I'll probably do that next time though - and put the FV a bit higher in the fridge. It's just a pity I can't position the fridge closer to the boiler.

Onwards and upwards....

[adm]

I've been a bit worried about this beer not starting, but I had a quick check this morning and there's now a nice yeast head developing. It's sat at 11.5C in the fridge, so I presume at the lower temperature it just takes longer to start up. Anyway.....it's off and running now!

So what's the expected fermentation time for an all grain lager at 11.5C then? If my ales get 8-14 days in FV, should I be looking at 14-21 days or so for this lager? (I know the real answer - it's ready when the FG is stable)

Anyway......let's say 21 days in primary - then is it OK to simply rack directly into cornies, gas them to seal the lids and then just bung them back in the fridge at 1C for a couple of months? I'm looking to get this beer as clear as i can - especially as I had no copper finings for this batch, so would I be better off splitting the lagering time and doing one month in bulk (10g carboy) and then rack again to cornies for final conditioning, or would straight to cornies from FV achieve the same results without the extra faffing about?

Finally......diacetyl rest and lagering temps...... for a diacetyl rest, after primary fermentation is done, I just let the temperature rise to around 18C for 24-48 hours, right? Then drop the temperature to as close to 0C as possible and hold there for the lagering period?

I might be getting ahead of myself a bit here.....but it's best to have a plan!

[edit1now]

...the name metamorphosed in front of me to Fritz's Gefühl (for which he got slapped) or perhaps Fritz's Fühlung ("Doctor, I can't quite explain this, but...")