First lager attempt

[Lord Fortney]

I am a relatively experienced all-grain brewer who is gearing up for my first lager attempt. (A bohemian pilsner with OG about 1.055) I have a dedicated fridge with temp control set at 50 degrees F. I made a yeast starter from a White Labs vial with a total volume of about 3 quarts. It was a simple starter with intermittent shaking made from a fresh vial received from Northern Brewer like 2 weeks ago. Fermentation has basically subsided and I was planning on ramping the starter up one more time to get the yeast ready to pitch. My question is this, how much yeast is really enough? I plan on pitching cold (50 degrees F) and I know lagers require more yeast to get going properly. Also while talking to another more experienced brewer at a recent judging event, he told me that he had been making a lot of lagers and using an aquarium pump with airstone to aerate the wort overnight even after he had pitched his yeast in. He said that this really got his yeast going and that he'd had problems in the past when he had only aerated for 15 minutes before pitching his yeast. He didn't mention any problems associated with doing it this way. I was pretty sure the common wisdom was that one shouldn't aerate after pitching the yeast. Is he just getting away with that practice because of the large lag time that lager yeast has before it actually takes off fermenting? Any thoughts, ideas and suggestions are greatly welcomed! I want my first lager to turn out as good as possible! Thanks!

[brewinhard]

I have done a bunch of lagers with varying strengths. At minimum I would aerate with my pure oxygen tank and diffusion stone 60 seconds after I pitched the yeast at cold temps = 50 degrees. (2-3 qt. starter or reusing from previous batch racked the same day). I have experienced on average about 16-30 hours lagtime with my methods. The lagers have been clean but relatively slow fermentation compared to warmer ale yeast. I have noted (obviously) that the liquid lager yeasts ALWAYS work better than dry lager fermentis yeast.... (BTW, love fermentis for ale yeasts- Cal ale, english SO-4).

I think that aeration overnight seems a bit much, and would be worried about oxidation compounds forming. However, there is very little research and information out there regarding aeration times of wort with various methods. I do recall Palmer stating that he felt he observed better fermentations using the air pump with stone method versus pure oxygen, but not saying how long he did it for. He does say that yeast absorb the initial oxygen given to them relatively quickly (30 min. - 60 min) and excess could lead to oxidation. The only reason I dont use the air pump is
1. takes too much time - versus 30-90 sec. with oxygen tank
2. I feel that there is contamination risk with longer times but, I am sure there are clean ways of pulling it off that I have not considered.

Not sure if this helped, but just wanted to give you some ideas to go on.....
Hopefully some others will post with their experience!

[MattSF]

i can't vote since i'm currently trying two of the methods on my American Pils I didn't have my O2 setup ready to go on pitch day (chilled wort in carboy and waited a day before pitching a la JZ) so I just did my usual pour back and forth via a large funnel. But the next day I was not thrilled with the slow start of the WLP800 so I used my now-ready O2 system for about 1 min in the beer.

Didn't Doc mention incremental oxygenation on one of the shows? or was it someone else?

So what did you end up doing, Fortney?