IPL: Lager Miser

[swenocha]

I haven't done an IPL yet. Sounds like this one turned out quite good. I might have to put an IPL up as my next lager... Hmm...

[Kealia]

You should wait for the independent reviews to come in. Never trust a brewer rating his own beer.

[Kealia]

I had one last bottle in the fridge that I decided to drink last night (about 6 got bottled from this batch). I expected the hops to be almost non-existent at this point with a malty, lager presence. What I got was a HUGE surprise. The beer was crystal clear, poured with a thick head and the aroma was as least as good if not better than it was a few months ago. Wowsers.

I figured the hops were going to be really in terms of flavor, too but it was better than the bottles I sent out and the stuff I drank from the keg. It didn't seem to lose anything at all and improved even more with 3 months in the fridge. Who knew lagering actually worked?

I wouldn't hesitate to brew this up again, but next time I'll plan on giving it three months post-packaging before drinking them with no fear of loss of aroma or taste. Maybe it was the hopstand that keep the hops so alive and kicking....

In any case, yum.

[Kealia]

The hopstand for this re-brew is almost done.
Once that is done I'll finish chilling it down (which was going to be easier with tap water in the IC before it decided to be 80 today!) and put my new STC-1000 to use.

I'm all out of kegs since LOML has a Wit in one - I brewed her the BrewDemon Wit - and I still have about 3G of the One Evil Pilsner from the big sale a while back. Last time I tried it I didn't care for it so I've been giving out growlers to get rid of it. I'll have to try it again and see if it's changed.

In any case, I was thinking about bottling this one and lagering them for a good while anyway so I don't tie up my fermentation chamber with a keg I'm not tapping.

The house smells of Magnum, Simcoe and Amarillo.....yum.

[BlackDuck]

Yum is right....I remember this. I still have the bottle with that awesome label on it too. It's a good beer, I hope you didn't change up the recipe.

[Kealia]

Nope, not at all. Well.....I didn't take the best notes last night in terms of my process or water amounts (this was an extract test batch) so I did my best to wing it. I guessed on what water amounts I used and I winged it on the split extract additions so it may not be 100% accurate (for example, I may have put in 1.5lbs of extract in late instead of 2 lbs, adding more early) but in the end it should be the same beer.

Gravity was 1.056 versus 1.058 last time so I must have estimated about right. I decided to not top it off with a bit more extract as:
1) I've never lost sleep over 2 pts
2) It took forever to chill down and I had to go buy ice to do it due to our heat wave

This will be bottled so samples will be sent - although it will be a while.

[Kealia]

Man, as much as I love stir plates, and healthy blowoffs from ales I hate lager yeast. I put this batch (about 3.3G) into my 5G carboy because that is the only thing I had open so there is a lot of headspace. Almost 48 hours later, it's just now showing bubbles in the airlock (filled with Starsan). It's clearly fermenting, and I knew it would take a while to fill the headspace with CO2, but between the airlock and bottom-fermenting yeast, there's very little kreusen and activity showing. In short, it's boring.

What good is brewing in a glass carboy if you can't get a peep show?
Maybe I need to go talk dirty to it to get it to show me something

It may be bad form to quote yourself but I'm doing it anyway.

#LagerYeastIsBoring

[Kealia]

I will never skip doing a starter with lager yeast again. I'm just shy of 72 hours since the pitch and have no signs of activity.
I realize now that I under-pitched by a bit, and last time I brewed this I had to wait a full 48 hours before seeing ANY krausen at all so I'm getting what I deserve.

I used WLP800 and I've read plenty of folks saying that 3-5 days before seeing activity isn't uncommon, but it's much longer than I like to wait.

With hindsight being 20/20 I brewed because I didn't have time to make a starter but instead of brewing on Saturday, I could easily have made a starter on Friday and brewed on Monday to pitch an active bunch of yeast.

I'm going to let it ride as I'm sure that it will start and at this point I'm just hoping that I didn't stress the yeast to the point of a ton of diacytel production. I prefer to pitch at fermenting temps rather than pitching warm and dropping the temp so that is working in my favor in terms of diacytel, but time will tell on this batch....

[Kealia]

Wow, 6 full days in befoee I saw anything happen here. This morning I finally have a small krausen going.

I can only hope that my sanitizing was spot on and nothing bad took hold during these last 6 days while the yeast were slacking off.

Fortunately my temp control has been spot on so I'm hoping for a solid fermentation with no diacytel given the low temp and slow start.

[Beer-lord]

Look at all that wasted space that could be more beer!
By the looks of the sediment in the bottom, it's done something.

[BlackDuck]

It looks like Frankenstein all wired up and ready to come alive!!!

[Kealia]

Look at all that wasted space that could be more beer!

Yeah, I know. It's a 6.5G carboy so I have about 3.5G in it. I suppose I could ramp up the production on this to a full 5G because it's an extract batch with late additions (partial boil). We'll see. I do tend to get tired of drinking too much of the same thing, though.

And I haven't drank much at all lately....

[Kealia]

I took a gravity sample today and I'm only @ 1.024. I have to remember that activity only really started about 9 days ago and this is lager yeast. That 6-7 lag before seeing anything really threw my timing off so I'm going to check it again next Friday to see where it stands. If I'm down in the 1.018 range or so I'll raise the temp for a d-rest and to finish it off. The good news is that the sample draw shows no signs of anything bad due to the long yet.

Good thing I didn't plan on drinking this for a long while. Now if I could only find time to brew again...

[Kealia]

After the d-rest this dropped down to 1.014 (expected FG) so I ruined my nice and clear bber by tossing in the dry hops and making it look like baby poop.

It's been 4 days, so tomorrow I start dropping the temps for the cold crash and then I plan on kegging on Wed night. This will go into the fridge to lager as long as I need it to. I'll use my backup CO2 tank to carb it so whenever I feel like tapping it, it will be ready.

Maybe I'll find a way to fill a few bottles, too.

[Kealia]

This was finally kegged on Wed night and into the kegerator it went. It's carbing up now but I don't plan on touching it for a solid month or so. It will just chill, if you'll pardon the pun.

It smelled heavenly. I didn't have enough left to bottle as the 3G batch yielded a perfect 2.5G for the keg. I tried to bottle one at the end and it just sucked up an insane amount of hops and *I* would never send anything like that out (cough, *Paul*).

In hindsight, I should have bottled a few mid-fill on the keg. Lesson learned.

By late April/May this should be a solid, crisp drinker with lots of aroma (based on how the last one held up).

I could really enjoy this beer after doing this --->
Except that I don't have a lawn...so I guess I'll just have to drink it without the work part