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The Carbonator wrote:Drsmurto, Im going to split this hair in two
You are talking about Cold Conditioning.
It is not lagering.
Lagering works a treat, wheras CCing is another word for aging your beers in the fridge.
Cold conditoning.
Bugger.
Forgot about that.
Points to you Carb
Having never made a lager (or more correctly, never brewed a lager at lager temps with a lager yeast - wait, that means i havent made a lager) i dont know why i feel the need to comment on how to make one....
The Carbonator wrote:Drsmurto, Im going to split this hair in two
You are talking about Cold Conditioning.
It is not lagering.
Lagering works a treat, wheras CCing is another word for aging your beers in the fridge.
Cold conditoning.
Bugger.
Forgot about that.
Points to you Carb
Having never made a lager (or more correctly, never brewed a lager at lager temps with a lager yeast - wait, that means i havent made a lager) i dont know why i feel the need to comment on how to make one....
I am fairly sure cold conditioning is the same thing as lagering, that is storing the beer in bulk directly after fermentation at low temperatures to condition the beer.
I believe the 2 different phrases exist because when spoken we say you can cold condition an ale whereas you 'lager' a lager.
Cold conditioning sounds like a term that was "stolen" from bulk conditioning, which is what we do when we put an ale in secondary - it improves the total batch before you bottle or keg the product. There's little to be gained by cold bulk conditioning an ale due to the yeast you use - of course, I'm assuming that you don't use a lager yeast to carbonate the ale!!
If you condition a beer at cold temps (sub 12C), I'd say you're lagering the beer.
I have a somewhat related questions which I don't think is worth it's own thread...
I'm currently brewing a lager, just racked it this afternoon, and I am planning to rack it again and refrigerate it for a period of time before bottling it. What sort of time period will I have before all the yeast will be dead and my beer will not carbonate?
G'day Toam,
Lagers need plenty of time and patience to make well - I'll assume that you racked the wort into primary this afternoon so we're talking about racking it again and putting it in the fridge in about 2 weeks time once the primary fermentation has concluded.
Without knowing anything about the yeast you used, it's not uncommon to rack the lager into secondary for a month in the fridge, bottle and it'll eventually carbonate over four to six more weeks. Unless you have an infection or poor hygiene protocols, the lager will happily lager away in the fridge (in secondary) for 4-6 weeks and then when you bottle, there should still be enough yeast to carbonate the bottled beer over the additional four to six weeks.
I have heard of some brewers adding yeast when they bottle their lager - a couple of dry lager yeast particles carefully sprinkled into each stubby should be enough to help carbonate your conditioned lager, but to be honest, I've never done that and not had poorly carbonated lager at the end of the whole process.
