FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
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Contents:
Re: Pseudo Lagering ("Craig S. Cottingham")
wort ("Fred Scheer")
Re: Pseudo Lagering (Randall Ricchi)
Re: Pseudo Lagering (Jeff Renner)
RE: Commercial Sparging ("Kevin Weaver")
Re: Pseudo Lagering (Kai Troester)
The effect of mash parameters on fermentability and efficiency (Kai Troester)
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Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2008 23:30:21 -0600
From: "Craig S. Cottingham" <craig.cottingham at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Pseudo Lagering
On Nov 19, 2008, at 16:20, "Lance Harbison" <harbison65 at
verizon.net> wrote:
> How
> important is the lowering of the temperature to lagering
> temperature at a
> rate of 1-2 degrees per day, since when space opens in the fridge
> any keg
> will simply be plopped in?
I've never tried it myself, but I can't imagine that a slow,
controlled lowering of temperature is strictly necessary. Bavarian
caves weren't fitted with Ranco controllers when lagering was
invented, to my knowledge.
- --
Craig S. Cottingham
BJCP Certified judge from Olathe, KS ([621, 251.1deg] Apparent
Rennerian)
craig.cottingham at gmail.com
+1 (913) 826-6896 or Skype me at CraigCottingham
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2008 06:16:04 -0600
From: "Fred Scheer" <fredscheer at gmail.com>
Subject: wort
HI Fred:
Sorry for posting a bit late, but we are getting ready here for
the MBAA One Day Technical Conference in Gatlingburg.
I would like to give you an example of our brewery.
Please keep in mind that depending on strength of beer, style, etc,
more malt and more water is used, but you know that.
The example I give is an average:
The day of brewing
10 BBL water at 170*F
1 BBL to heat mash-tun
4 BBL mash - in H20
grist/water ratio 1:2.8
sparge water 5 BBL
First wort between 2.2 and 2.7 BBL
Kettle full 8 BBL
sparging ~ 3 gal/min; ~ 50 min, most times <3gal/min, and 60 min sparge
the same is for the total run, ~ 3 gal (or less) per min., meaning
kettle is full ~ 80 minutes
Ihope you where looking for that info,
Fred (you know, the other Fred)
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2008 07:50:51 -0500
From: Randall Ricchi <rricchi at houghton.k12.mi.us>
Subject: Re: Pseudo Lagering
This is one of those situations where you do the best you can with what
you have. Ideally you would drop the temp gradually (5 degrees per day
is good) so that you don't shock the yeast, but what you're going to do
will work just as well, I think. While the 3 unrefrigerated kegs are
waiting there turn in the cold, they will continue to mature, the yeast
cleaning up after itself, and doing so at a faster rate than it would in
the cold.
Even with regular ale yeasts that don't work well in the cold (if at
all) prolonged cold storage somehow "cleans up" the flavor profile of a
beer. Possibly the coagulation and settling of polyphenols is the reason?
>
> Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2008 16:20:16 -0500
> From: "Lance Harbison" <harbison65 at verizon.net>
> Subject: Pseudo Lagering
>
> I just kegged (in 4 cornies) 17 gal of Altbier. I plan on lagering each
> keg, but currently only have room for 1 of the kegs in my fridge. The
> remaining 3 kegs are resting in my 60F basement until space opens up. How
> important is the lowering of the temperature to lagering temperature at a
> rate of 1-2 degrees per day, since when space opens in the fridge any keg
> will simply be plopped in? Similarly, are there any negatives to delayed
> lagering?
>
> Lance Harbison
> Pittsburgh
>
>
>
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2008 08:08:47 -0500
From: Jeff Renner <jsrenner at umich.edu>
Subject: Re: Pseudo Lagering
"Lance Harbison" <harbison65 at verizon.net> wrote from Pittsburgh:
> I just kegged (in 4 cornies) 17 gal of Altbier. I plan on lagering
> each
> keg, but currently only have room for 1 of the kegs in my fridge. The
> remaining 3 kegs are resting in my 60F basement until space opens
> up. How
> important is the lowering of the temperature to lagering
> temperature at a
> rate of 1-2 degrees per day, since when space opens in the fridge
> any keg
> will simply be plopped in? Similarly, are there any negatives to
> delayed
> lagering?
Lance, Lance, Lance. You live in Pittsburgh! How about using that
big fridge with the blue ceiling? Well, this time of year, the gray
ceiling.
Or even better, if you have a garage, it's probably staying above
freezing this time of year.
Either way, it will take some management, especially if you put the
kegs outdoors. For that you could make a box of styrofoam sheets or
even cardboard, and bring the kegs inside for a short time when they
get too cold. Even if the beer actually freezes, it won't hurt, and
may actually help clarify it.
I think that you are being too conservative regarding the rate of
temperature drop. It's important not to shock the yeast so that it
can continue to slowly ferment any residual sugars, but it can
survive a drop of 5-10 degrees F per day, as I understand it. I just
put my green beers in the fridge and figure that the thermal mass
probably slows the drop enough to keep from shocking the yeast, and
it always works.
While it shouldn't hurt too much to delay lagering, you may lose some
of the freshness that would be preserved at cold temperatures. At
near freezing, your beer will stay in prime condition far longer.
And while altbier it traditionally lagered at around 40F/4C rather
than the 32F/0C or even colder for bottom fermenting lagers, I think
I'd just go for as cold as is convenient.
Jeff
PS - Lance's post is a prime example of why I always ask folks to
include their location in their posts. Aside from contributing to a
sense of community, it often helps to answer questions, as in this case.
- ---
Jeff Renner in Ann Arbor, Michigan USA, jsrenner at umich.edu
"One never knows, do one?" Fats Waller, American Musician, 1904-1943
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2008 10:46:51 -0500
From: "Kevin Weaver" <kweaver at brewmation.com>
Subject: RE: Commercial Sparging
I'm hoping more readers post their opinions about the two methods...1)
collecting the complete volume in the kettle and 2) topping up the
kettle with make-up water.
I find the two posts interesting because our brewery designs have always
provided the means of using the make up water. On my personal system, I
have it programmed to give me the option of doing either method for
testing purposes. The only difference I have seen is a calculated
increase in efficiency while using method #2. Of course there are many
factors to this, such as sparging time, grain bills, actual efficiency
of the MT etc. We use peristaltic pumps so the sparge time is very
predictable and repeatable, so perhaps this is why the variation between
the two methods is minimal and I do not run into PH issues. It's just
made me question how necessary the added cost of providing the "make-up"
water option really is. Adding this to the semi-auto system is not a
big deal... However, for the fully automatic system it does add to the
cost.
Does anyone have results/opinions they can share? There are a lot of
brewers designing their own systems so I would think it's a good topic.
Kevin
Brewmation Incorporated
www.brewmation.com
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:00:18 -0500
From: Kai Troester <kai at braukaiser.com>
Subject: Re: Pseudo Lagering
> How
> important is the lowering of the temperature to lagering temperature at a
> rate of 1-2 degrees per day, since when space opens in the fridge any keg
> will simply be plopped in? Similarly, are there any negatives to delayed
> lagering?
The importance of lowering the temperature gradually depends on if the
yeast is still needed or not. If it is not needed (i.e. all the sugars
that the yeast was supposed to eat are eaten and diacetyl and other
young beer components have been sufficiently reduced) there is no
problem with "crashing" the yeast. In this case lagering only serves
to cold stabilize the beer by precipitating hazes.
In your case, and most other home brewer's case, fermentation is
complete before lagering starts. Especially if a warm rest (aka
diacetyl rest) is done at the end of primary fermentation or if
primary fermentation is extended until there is no airlock activity
left and the yeast has dropped out. In these cases you can just crash
the beer. That's what I do and I have also found out the hard way that
it is rather tricky to keep the yeast active enough while lowering the
temp. The result have been uderattenuated beers.
So you will be fine with serial lagering for these kegs of Altbier,
especially since the yeast can take care of the beer while it is still
sitting at 60F. B/c of fermentation space constrains I had to forgo
lagering on my current Altbier. I only clarified it with gelatin and
then bottled with a lager yeast to allow for carbonation in the 60F
basement. The beer is great.
Kai
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:57:30 -0500
From: Kai Troester <kai at braukaiser.com>
Subject: The effect of mash parameters on fermentability and efficiency
For most of this year I have been conduction micro scale mashing
experiments that were designed to evaluate the effects that mash.
I already posted intermediate results earlier this year, but now
I have finally wrapped up the experiment and posted the results
on my site:
http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=Limit_of_attenuation_experiment
There is also a PDF version (which prints better, sorry about the
wrap on the address. But HBD needs me to keep the line length below
80):
http://braukaiser.com/documents/
Effects_of_mash_parameters_on_attenuation_and_efficiency.pdf
And James Spencer from Basic Brewing Radio interviewed me for this
week?s podcast:
http://www.basicbrewing.com/index.php?page=radio
All in all, this has been a quite interesting series of experiments
for me with a few surprises. The surprises were that mash thickness
has hardly any effect on fermentability but it can have a significant
effect on efficiency. The thinner mashes showed better results with
respect to their ability to convert the starch in the grist. Another
surprise was that the efficiency in these micro mashes was not as good
as the one I get in the 5 gal mashes I make to brew beer. In those big
mashes I can get 100% conversion efficiency (i.e. convert all the
starch present in the mash) whereas I did not see this for any of the
mashes in the experiment.
Kai
------------------------------
End of HOMEBREW Digest #5454, 11/20/08
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