Batch 9

My very first lager and I was so nervous that it would turn out like shit. Maybe I was scared because of everyone’s saying how difficult it is to make good lager, since it needs to ferment in a colder environment than room temperature. So I gave it go with my temp controllable fridge!

For batch nr 9 I decided to take another step into unknown territory (for me, of course) and make a lager which is a bottom-fermented beer, i.e it’s fermented at a lower temperature (6-12c) than its counterpart ale which is a top fermented beer (18-24). To avoid any off-flavors, one can raise the temperature after the initial fermentation has completed. This was my first time every doing a lager but since I wanted to avoid as many off-flavors I possibly could, I accepted the challenge to raise the temperature with my stepping program in STC controller unit.

The tricky part is to know how much the beer has fermented, and the most reliable way to know is to check SG value with a hydrometer, which requires a sample of the beer every time. Everything seemed to go well, until the programmed cold crashing began without me measuring SG since I wasn’t home at the time (opps). This meant that I didn’t know if the beer was finished fermenting or not and could cause a lot of problems down the road.

I needed to know, so I took a measurement and it showed 1,020 which is way too high. I tried to calm myself and remembered that the hydrometer only shows accurate readings when measuring liquid at 20c degrees. So I made sure that the beer was calibrated to 20c and redid the test and now it was reading 1,016 which is still a bit high but in range of the calculated FG.

Alright so maybe it was finished, or soon to be, either way I let it sit while longer and then transferred it to bottles for carbonation and storing and crossed my fingers nothing would explode.

With the result in hand I can confirm that no accidents or explosions happened so most likely it was finished when the cold crash step hit (puh). The beer turned out really good as well, not too sweet despite the bit higher residual sugar. I think what made it taste so good for me is because it was deemed so hard and difficult and yet it turned out good, even though I messed up along the way. It sure adds a bit of extra to it when you know all the effort that has been put into it.

I almost forgot! Prior to this batch, I had also invested in a new capper named “Griffo” which is a lot more sturdier and easier to use than the beginners edition “Greta”, which most likely will collect dust from now on.

I also got a tip from a fellow homebrewer in a facebook group that IKEA offers these great boxes that neatly fit 20 bottles and makes great for storing purposes.