Almost a month ago now, on June 12th, we brewed our first lager! We used an Ayinger Oktoberfest-Marzen recipe from the Clone Brews book. The home brew store didn't have the preferred yeast (Wyeast Munich Lager if I remember right) so instead we used the recipe's "second choice" of Wyeast Oktoberfest. Who knows what the flavor difference will be, but maybe it'll be interesting having a little bit of a departure from the exact book recipe.
As far as the brew day goes it was basically the same as any ale we've done. Since I did all the tweaking with BeerSmith settings it did seem like the temperatures and measurements went better this time - particularly the strike temp / mash temp that we had problems with last time. The worst part of the brew day was that we started it at 8pm, so we didn't actually get completely finished until 2 in the morning.
One challenge that's new with the lager is that this is our first time actually using the chest freezer to keep the beer cold. Previously we've been using a space heater to keep it at about 69 or 70, but for the lager yeast we wanted fermentation to happen in the low 50s. Even with the temperature differential (the difference between the turn-on point and the turn-off point) of the temperature controller set to only 1 degree, the freezer would kick on, stay one for a bit, and then even after it shut off the temperature would continue to drop several degrees past the shut-off point. I put a small fan in the freezer to help air circulation and that seems to have helped a little bit. Plus, as Amy pointed out, even if the air temperature is fluctuating as much as five degrees when the freezer kicks on, that doesn't mean the actual 3 gallons of beer in there is changing temperature that much.
We waited two weeks to rack the beer, which all went smoothly. The beer seemed to taste good, although it clearly needed more time to develop. It also reached the target final gravity so that was a great sign that fermentation went well and we were ready to start lagering.
After racking we dropped the set point on the temperature controller one degree each day until the beer was down in the low 40s. Now our beer is officially lagering! The plan is to let it sit for five weeks, bottle, and then let it bottle condition for another five. If all goes well, we'll be tasting on September 19th - the official start of Oktoberfest in Germany!
---> [ Oktoberfest Bottling ]
