Posted: Saturday Jul 14, 2007 5:56 pm
A lager should be ok at 8C but it's a bit on the cool side so make sure you have a decent starter of lager yeast to do the work at that temp. I tend to keep my lagers fermenting around 10-11C. At 8C it should be fine but may take more than 2 weeks to finish off in primary....before racking.Kevnlis wrote:Right now I need to know how to rack this brew. I have never heard of racking before but have done a fair bit of reading around the forums and still don't fully understand what it is I should do, or how, or when. Is it the same with all brews because it seems for a lager it is more important?
Thanks in advance guys!
Racking is a term brewers use to lift the fermented wort (beer) off the yeast cake in the primary / first fermenter. Once the beer is nearly or fully finished off in primary, some brewers like to transfer / rack the beer to a secondary vessel/fermenter/keg to bulk condition. The beer develops and improves more quickly in bulk rather than in smaller vessels such as bottles so if you can hang on for another couple of weeks, it may be beneficial to rack the beer into a secondary fermenter and let the yeast further flocc out of the beer and completely finish off all the sugars that it wants to have a go at - note: the yeast never completely finishes off all the available sugars, but that's another topic!
Apart from improving the clarity and quality of the beer, some brewers also like to dry hop their beer. Since the vigorous ferment in primary pushes a lot of CO2 out of your airlock, it also pushes out some of the hop aroma that you went to the trouble of adding in the first place, so some brewers like to compensate for that by adding 10g or so of dry hops straight onto the beer that you rack into the secondary fermenter. It's not compulsory but if you want extra aroma to the beer, it's one way of doing that.
Another reason why some brewers rack their beer is to bulk prime it - instead of adding priming sugar to the bottle, you can add 160g,or so, of sugars to a fermenter, rack the beer to mix (without splashing or bubbling which may oxidise the beer = cardboard flavours) and then bottle the primed beer. Just make sure that primary is finished before you add the beer to the bulk sugars and make sure that when you gently transfer the beer by hose, you curl it around the bottom of the racking fermenter so you create a gentle whirlpool that helps dissolve and mix the priming sugar to the beer.
So, racking is an optional step used by brewers to further condition and/or bulk prime their beer. Taking the beer off the yeast cake virtually eliminates the risk of yeast autolysis which results in a totally undrinkable beer if you leave the beer on the yeast cake at fermenting temps for too long...
Cheers,
TL
