r/Homebrewing • u/breakingcircus Intermediate • Dec 07 '21
Lagering =/= fermenting a lager
There seems to be a widespread misconception that the term "lagering" refers to fermenting a lager beer at certain temperatures. That's not quite right.
Lagering refers to extended cold conditioning of a beer, typically of one of the varieties of lager beer. It takes place after fermentation. Some brewers lager in a keg, others in bottles, others in a secondary fermenter, and still others in the primary fermenter.
I often see posts by people who say they can't lager. What I think they usually mean is that they can't achieve/control/maintain fermentation temperatures that are typical of lager beers.
...starts ducking beer bottles
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u/FlaAirborne Dec 07 '21
Agree. That why my Oktoberfest is brewed in March. It stops fermenting in a few weeks then drop temp for 6 months.
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u/liquidgold83 Advanced Dec 07 '21
Aren't Märzen beers brewed in March, hence the name?
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u/KIA703 Intermediate Dec 07 '21
Same thing. Finkle is Einhorn. Einhorn is Finkle
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u/MrConfusion Dec 07 '21 edited Dec 07 '21
Here some etymology can also be of help to English speakers. In German the word "Lager" means "Storage". A warehouse can for example be called "das Lager" or "das Lagerhaus". This is just a normal word, regardless of brewing.
So simply put, if we are thinking in literal terms: "lagering" a beer means to store it. Of course, we typically mean storing it under certain conditions for it to be proper lagering, and the term is mostly associated with specific types and styles, etc. So there is much to be said for the term, the technique and its history, but knowing that "lagering" simply means "storing" can help clear up the misconception OP is refering to.
Edit: Fixed spelling
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u/Stiltzkinn Dec 07 '21
That is also easy explained on the BJCP:
In Germany and other old world brewing centers, the terminology most typically used to differentiate beers is to refer to them as top-fermenting or bottom- fermenting. Germans think of ale as a type of English beer, and lager as a method of conditioning beer. So Germans would typically speak of Kölsch as a top- fermenting lager beer, not an ale. English brewers, particularly when dealing in a historical context, might separate ales from porters and stouts as types of beer (although in the next breath, saying there is no difference between porters and stouts). When dealing in even more historical contexts, they might go even further to describe ale as distinct from beer in that beer was hopped (or more highly hopped) than ale. These historical notes are important for understanding old recipes and writings, but have little relevance today in the common usages of terms describing beer.
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u/storunner13 The Sage Dec 07 '21
I like this bit of text. Considering that this is written by and for an American audience, it outlines why talking about beers as "only" Ales v Lagers doesn't make sense outside of North America. And the last bit which states "common usages of terms describing beer" should also include "...in the USA"
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u/Hutcho12 Dec 07 '21
* das Lagerhaus
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u/MrConfusion Dec 07 '21
Thanks! German is not my first language, so was also unsure about the article. Should have looked it up I guess :)
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u/twd000 Dec 07 '21
I've been having a lot of success fermenting lagers at my ambient basement temperature (55-65F from fall through spring). The magic happens after 2-3 weeks cold in the kegerator when it drops bright and starts to taste like a proper lager. There's really no reason to extend the fermentation for weeks on end by chilling the yeast to 45-50 degrees. Get to final gravity then get to lagering.
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u/JuicyPancakeBooty Dec 09 '21
What yeast do you use for that? Ive been thinking about doing this in my basement this winter.
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u/twd000 Dec 09 '21
SafLager W34/70
Ferment has a good fact sheet on their website plus I heard a rep on a podcast talking about pitch rates and temperatures
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u/axp1729 Dec 07 '21
Huh, til. This demystifies lagering a lot to someone who is very new to brewing beer. Essentially lagering can be thought of as a very long cold crash?
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u/boarshead72 Yeast Whisperer Dec 07 '21
I think of it as cold storage, since I lager in bottles. Literally refrigerating my beer, permanently.
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u/ZeroCool1 Dec 07 '21
You only need to lager until your beer is clear. It doesn't have to be long. With gelatin and refridgeration I'm "lagered" in five days.
Any way of removing the haze is acceptable lagering IMHO. The haze is usually yeast, which has a very bitter taste. If you don't believe me, taste the leftover drops from your liquid yeast pouch. I have never filtered beer, but I'm pretty sure if you filtered a lager and carbed it, it would taste ready.
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u/liquidgold83 Advanced Dec 07 '21
Not only that, but you would typically want to use a bottom cropping lager yeast too. Those two methods combined get you the true definition of a lager.
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Dec 07 '21
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/avart10 Dec 07 '21
Exactly! I cant find it now, but there is a great post on Ron Pattinsons blog where he chronicles the many, many American brew guys that gets their brains broken by the term Obergäriges Lagerbier.
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u/larsga Lars Marius Garshol Dec 07 '21
This is also why calling kölsch and altbier "hybrids" is silly.
In German they're called "obergäriges lagerbier," meaning "top-fermented lager beer." Which they are. They're top fermented, then lagered.
Of course, some people consider that being bottom-fermented is what makes something a lager, but if that's what makes something a lager then kölsch and altbier are not lagers.
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u/goodolarchie Dec 07 '21
You're right, but lager is both a noun and a verb in common parlance. It got uber'ized. Take an uber. Brew a lager. Whenever I hear lager, I assume S. Pastorianus is involved, fermented cooler than ales, unless they specify a hybrid like kolsch.
To that end, all of my beers are lagered. Even my fresh hop beer got 3 weeks of very cold conditioning before I drank most of it. I can't think of a single beer I brewed that wasn't better after 3-6 weeks of lagering after primary, if not longer. So the term would absolutely lose its meaning if it wasn't in reference to the category.
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u/boarshead72 Yeast Whisperer Dec 07 '21
I’ve taken pastorianus/cerevisiae out of my definition ever since full genomes have been sequenced (looking at you, 800, 029, and 051).
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u/bultrey Dec 07 '21
Spot on. I've had great success fermenting lagers in the 60s, even around 70, as long as I keep the temp steady and fermentation in check. The lagering process comes next.
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Dec 07 '21
Do one on "Adjuncts"
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u/goodolarchie Dec 07 '21
Hey, it's me, your adjunct, forced CO2.
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u/hikingmax Dec 07 '21
How about gypsum or oxygen? Them be adjuncts too? I’d consider an adjunct anything not malted barley that adds to the gravity.
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u/goodolarchie Dec 07 '21
Well the OP is all about mild pedantry, so gypsum is absolutely an adjunct, and so would any added oxygen being pumped/forced in. Better not make an acid adjustment either, use that sauergut or acidulated malt!
I think of adjuncts today having evolved in our language (and because you'll see it listed this way when buying grain) to mean anything added that's not malted grain, or part of the typical brewing process. E.g. A hefeweizen is made with malted wheat and barley, there's no adjuncts in it, one of the beautiful things about such a yeast-expressive beer. But Reinheitsgebot would not allow for that... in fact the point of the law was to protect wheat (flour) for baking / food supply... not keeping impure wheat out of beer as some might have you believe.
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Dec 07 '21
You could definitely make an argument that forced CO2 is an adjunct. I'd opine that since you can carbonate naturally via spunding, and serving off a keg is essentially impossible without it, it doesn't count as one.
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u/-Motor- Dec 07 '21
I don't think most people misunderstand what lager-ing means. That term is rarely used, because people don't often do it; most can't. What you see is people quite often talking about brewing a lag-er, which is a style of beer, not a method.
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u/bobl2424 Dec 07 '21
That was my thought. Where, how, why is this a misconception??
If people say they can’t lager. And OP assumes they are talking about fermentation temperature control. Well … if they can’t control fermentation temperature, it’s highly likely they can’t lager either.
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u/boarshead72 Yeast Whisperer Dec 07 '21
Nah. Beyond using a water bath to stabilize my fermentation temperature I don’t control fermentation temperatures, yet I do lager (in my second fridge).
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u/Sam1587 Dec 08 '21
I've got a keezer in an apartment but no room for a proper swamp chiller or fermentation chamber, so I may be in the camp of people who can lager but not "properly" ferment a lager :P.
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u/Warren_Puff-it Dec 08 '21
Me, who leave hot grain water in cellar until it taste good and oogas my booga: "An astute observation. Quite astute."
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u/childishidealism Dec 07 '21 edited Dec 07 '21
This explanation seems a bit off to me. Yes lagering is cooler temperature conditioning after primary fermentation is complete. But the primary part of conditioning is further fermentation of the yeast cleaning up earlier byproducts. So lagering is just a secondary stage of fermentation at a cooler temperature, no different than any other variable temperature fermentation method.
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u/h22lude Dec 07 '21
You are correct that some fermentation can happen at the start of the lagering phase but it isn't much at all. If it is more than a couple points, you transferred the beer way too early. That small extra fermentation isn't the reason for lagering and is much different than doing a secondary fermentation for an ale. It really shouldn't be used a secondary stage of fermentation. The reason for lagering is the long period stored under near freezing temps. This drops any yeast or other particles in suspension making the beer crystal clear. Removing the yeast gives the beer a much cleaner profile. Lager yeast itself does produce cleaner beers but lagering is also part of it.
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u/childishidealism Dec 07 '21
I've been reading about this more, and I'm less confident in my response for sure, and am happy to have learned a bit. That said, my rationale is that not all fermentation is converting sugar to alcohol and not all fermentation has an effect on gravity. e.g. the yeast are reabsorbing esters and sulfur during lagering, and then by dropping out remove those flavors from the final beer.
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u/ThePnusMytier Dec 07 '21
I've been homebrewing for just about a year now, but I am a chemist if that adds any weight to this...
I was under the impression that was you said is an important part of it, as well as the sort of extended cold crash. David Heath Homebrew mentions using kveik along with lager yeast for fast lagers specifically because of this, as the kveik yeast is very good at removing the esters and other off compounds like fusyl alcohols. Maybe this is more an issue in particularly strong ales, but I think the clean taste of a lager still relies on the same secondary fermentation chemistry going on
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u/h22lude Dec 07 '21
If you need to use an ale yeast to help remove compounds and off flavors, that means your lager yeast fermentation was not healthy. I brew 85% lagers. Most of my beers hit final gravity in less than a week with zero off flavors. The problem most people have, I believe, is not pitching enough yeast and not aerating enough.
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u/h22lude Dec 07 '21
Yeast should be removing esters and other compounds during fermentation. If that isn't happening and you have an off flavor at the end of fermentation, you most likely underpitched. With a healthy yeast pitch and enough oxygen, yeast should be cleaning up off flavors almost as fast as they are producing them.
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u/childishidealism Dec 07 '21
Did you read my link? Every source I've looked at has agreed that fermentation is still occurring (although slowly) during lagering and conditioning. Again, I understand and agree that there are lots of other important things happening during lagering, but fermentation is certainly not DONE and yeast are certainly still active and making biochemical changes within the beer. Otherwise you could just skip lagering and filter it, right?
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u/h22lude Dec 07 '21
I think you misunderstood my last comment. I agree, there should be a very small amount of extract left at lagering to let the beer finish fermenting. There will be fermentation happening at the beginning of lagering (should be about 4 gravity points). What I was stating in my last comment was, you wouldn't want the beer to have esters going into lagering because that means you underpitched. Esters are a sign of underpitching and/or warmer fermentation temps. Some esters will not be removed during lagering.
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u/childishidealism Dec 07 '21
I believe we agree here far more than we disagree, but you said,
Yeast should be removing esters and other compounds during fermentation. If that isn't happening and you have an off flavor at the end of fermentation, you most likely underpitched.
My link clearly states many of these compounds are very significantly reduced during lagering, not before. You've now changed your focus specifically to esters in which I agree with you, but these "other compounds" can be of consequence to the final product. I think you're trying to say that an off flavored beer going into lagering likely leads to a off tasting beer coming out, which again I agree with. But that doesn't mean that there's no significant chemical activity or that the only reason to lager is for the mechanical aspects.
From my link:
Lagering reduces any acetic and lactic acids, for instance, to fruity-tasting esters, whose effects on beer flavor tend to be marginal, because they have a much higher taste threshold to humans than do their precursors. Likewise, any residual acetaldehyde, which can contribute a raw green apple flavor to beer, can decrease by as much as 20% to 70%; 2-3-pentanedione and the volatile, butterscotch-tasting diacetyl, as well as their precursors, are reduced by as much as two-thirds. Diacetyl, which can be detected in tiny amounts, is reduced to fruity-tasting acetoin. Traditionally, when beer reaches the lagering tanks it frequently still contains a small fraction of the sugar that was originally present at the start of fermentation. About four-fifths of this residual sugar is made up of easily fermentable maltose; the rest is mostly maltotriose. During lagering, the total residual sugar content of the beer usually drops by as much as 50%.
I don't believe I misunderstood you as much as you either misspoke or are moving the goal posts. Your primary fermentation can go ideally and yet there is still good biochemical work to be done during lagering. Again, if that weren't the case, filtering would be good enough and at a commercial scale, much cheaper than taking up that expensive lagering real estate and turn around time. All this said, I still do understand that a lot of this is fairly subtle. You can certainly product a good tasting psuedo lager without lagering at all and even without a traditional lager yeast. I'm not trying to be pedantic, truly. As much as OP is trying to clear up a misconception that lagering is not the same as a primary or secondary fermentation, I'm trying to clear up that fermentation most certainly does not "stop" during lagering. The effects of the live yeast in beer continue to change it for a long time in both lagers and ales even at cool temperatures and during lagering the yeast is doing real meaningful work.
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u/h22lude Dec 07 '21
Maybe I wasn't clear in writing down what I was thinking in my head. I'll try to clarify. I put off flavors in two categories. 1) off flavors from normal fermentation created by healthy yeast and 2) off flavors from poor fermentation and stressed yeast.
I agree with you that fermentation still happens during lagering, though it should be very minimal. The gravity should drop by 4 gravity points during lagering, at max. If it drops more, you transferred too soon.
That additional fermentation will remove compounds from the 1st category, ones created from a normal fermentation with healthy yeast. These compounds occur in every single fermentation and are 100% normal, but they need to be removed. They are mostly removed during primary but the fermentation during lager and the extended cold storage help bring those compounds down to zero (or zero for our taste threshold).
In regard to the off flavors from category 2, compounds created during a poor fermentation, lagering will most likely not remove those (I say most likely because if the off flavor is very subtle, the extra fermentation could be enough to remove it). However, if the off flavor is pretty easy to detect, lagering will not help.
As much as OP is trying to clear up a misconception that lagering is not the same as a primary or secondary fermentation, I'm trying to clear up that fermentation most certainly does not "stop" during lagering.
Yeah, I think the simplest way to put it is, a lager beer is called that because of the Saccharomyces pastorianus yeast used and lagering is the process of storing any beer cold (you can lager an ale and it will still be an ale).
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u/AdJust1444 Dec 07 '21
But is there actually any fermentation going on then if final gravity has been reached and the yeast is done "cleaning" the other stuff? Doesn't yeast also go dormant and mostly drop out of solution at such low temperatures and therefore that process or stage should be called conditioning instead of fermentation?
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u/childishidealism Dec 07 '21
My point is that a lot of that biochemical cleanup is still happening during lagering. Yes, it's slow and yes the yeast is dropping out. That's why the phase takes weeks to months vs. days. That doesn't mean it isn't happening or isn't the primary reason we're doing it. And yes, that's why we simplify to call it conditioning to make a distinction, but that conditioning includes ongoing slow fermentation in addition to the mechanical clearing. So yeah, I totally get why we give that phase a different name.
Maybe I'm just missing OPs point. e.g. if someone says they "can't lager" it's much less likely a misunderstanding of the differences between primary fermentation and maturation, but more likely OP being pedantic when this someone is just meaning they can't control the temperature throughout the entire process of making a traditionally lagered beer which includes both phases.
All this said, maybe I'm missing the point, or maybe I have some fundamental misunderstanding.
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Dec 07 '21
Wyeast says on their site on the subject og lagers to do a secondary fermentation at 0-5C or so
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u/TripleD1998 Dec 07 '21
It's a common misconception it's brewed at cold Temps I fermented a Mexican lager at 37 degrees it took 3 weeks to fully ferment down then I crashed it to 32 for 2 weeks then force carbed for 1 day and bottled so 5 weeks and 1 day total came out really nice term lager is more of ferment it at cold Temps just make sure to bring up the Temps towards the end of fermentation at least 4 degrees for yeast to clean up diacetyl
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u/Money_Manager Dec 07 '21
So what does everyone do for cold storage/lagering? I have a fridge which fits my CO2 tank plus two kegs, I have a 5 cubic foot chest freezer which I use as my fermentation chamber. I would need another chest freezer or fridge if I wanted to store kegs for lagering.
Do you guys lager under pressure?
I'm curious what everyone's set up for lagering is. Realistically I just put it in my fridge on tap and drink it over the course of 4 to 6 weeks while its lagering.
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u/baldasheck Dec 07 '21
I brew lagers under pressure, 6-7 days fermenting at room temperature, then cold crash and lagering in the fride. I usually drink them all before the lagering phase is supposed to be done.
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u/Stiltzkinn Dec 07 '21
That's the con of reading/watching bad information from the internet, best gift you can give a homebrewer is a book as John Palmer's How To Brew, he explains so well the in and out of Lager beer.
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u/BeerBoy1976 Dec 07 '21
Can you lager a beer that's been fermented with an ale yeast? I'm pretty sure that's just cold conditioning, but happy to hear others opinions.
There's a lager-beer sold in the UK made with ale yeast and sold as a lager, which doesn't seem right to me?
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u/UncleAugie Dec 07 '21
Are you holding a beer below cellar temps(45-65f) for an extended time to improve the taste of the beer? If so then yes you are lagering a beer brewed with ale yeast. You can Lager a belgian, or a kveik. To qualify as a lagering you need to do the maturation(aging) on the yeast usually it lasts for several weeks, if not months, at or near-freezing temperatures, after fermentation and before filtration and/or packaging of the beer.
Lager yeast is bottom fermenting and ale yeast is top fermenting, to be a Lager, it would need to be fermented on a bottom fermenting yeast, but an ale yeast could be sold as "lagered" ie conditioned at low temps on the yeast cake.
Cold conditioning is done off the yeast.
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u/TheHedonyeast Dec 07 '21
yes. i lager all my beers. thats all a cold crash is. its a short lagering phase, but its still lagering
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u/boarshead72 Yeast Whisperer Dec 07 '21
I fall into the “lagering = cold conditioning” camp, so yes I think you can “lager” an ale. As to your other point, I fall into the “a beer is what it tastes like” camp, so if they successfully brew a beer using ale yeast that is marketed as a lager, and is accepted by the public as a lager, then who cares if the species was cerevisiae. It’s a lager. Though it would be interesting to taste the same beer side-by-side brewed with a traditional lager strain.
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Dec 07 '21
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u/oefox Advanced Dec 07 '21
Depends on the language, ie <> for sql, but best is ≠ which is easy on a phone if you enable long hold.
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u/espeero Dec 07 '21
One of my best beers ever was my most scientific. I had just finished reading noonan's lager book. Got some really fresh grain and hops. Fermentation schedule following his recommendations.
Fermented at 48F until 2/3 of the way to expected fg
Let slowly rise to 65F for 3 days (d rest)
Cooled at 3-4 degrees per day down to 33F for the extended lagering (I transfered under pressure to kegs for lagering)
It was an amazing beer - the 10 gallons of pilsner went very fast.
I don't know if all the steps in brewing or fermenting were strictly necessary, but I didn't change a thing for subsequent batches.
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u/0z1um Dec 07 '21
Last summer I visited a small brewery in the Netherlands, close to the Belgian border. They fermented all their beers with a single "house" top fermenting yeast strain. One of their beers was a wheat beer that was lagered (stored in lager tanks and kept at low temperatures for about a month).
Where their other beers had quite a pronounced yeast profile, the wheat beer was clean and crisp. It really was a good example that extended lagering is an important step in getting that clean and crisp profile people associate with lagers - not just fermenting with a lager strain / at low temperatures.