Wtf!?

[no_borders]

im fairly new to brewing lagers, decided to do an american dark lager for the nhc this year. tasted it all through fermentation, so signs of diacetyl at all. just to be sure i even did a rest for a week before lagering. first tasted it out of the keg after a week of conditioning and thats all i could taste, straight butter. i was getting discouraged and was getting ready to dump it, but for ****s i tried it again and it appears to be going away. i cannot explain this at all, the more i pour off and the longer it sits the better it gets, i just didnt think that you could clean up diacetyl with lagering/conditioning. maybe i was tasting yeast that had fallen to the bottom of the keg? i really dont know, im not upset by anymeans, just confused

 

[BrewMoreBeers]

Time curse many things... that is why many brewers are using month+ primary fermentations.

 

[no_borders]

I understand that, what blew my mind was I always thought the only way you could clean up diacetyl was by letting the yeast reabsorb it, but it seems that have have in the keg, even though it's pressurized and I always thought co2 poisoned the yeast, I don't know I'll keep at it and see how the story develops, thanks man

 

[El_Exorcisto]

Pressure doesn't poison yeast at the levels we work with. If it did, we wouldn't be able to bottle condition our beer.

 

[Hammy71]

Lager's need more than a week to condition. In fact, in my experience, months are required until the beer taste the way I feel it should. Many have a 'buttery' taste when first tapped, but after a month or two of lagering....yummy.

 

[android]

Lager's need more than a week to condition. In fact, in my experience, months are required until the beer taste the way I feel it should. Many have a 'buttery' taste when first tapped, but after a month or two of lagering....yummy.

totally agree. i have only made a handful of lagers, but they have all tasted slightly to moderately diacetyl-y right away. i just need to stop tasting them until they've conditioned for a good 6 weeks. i wasted half a keg of dortmunder export obsessing over the taste of it and when i finally forgot about it and retapped it a month or two later it turned out to be one of the best brews i've done.

 

[remilard]

If you want no diacetyl ever pitch 3-5 degrees below the fermentation temp and increase to 10 degrees over the fermentation temp once the krausen begins to fall.

A good test for diacetyl is to heat a sample as this will accelerate the conversion of precursor to diacetyl.

 

[no_borders]

i always have every intention of letting my beer for a good amount of time, i just get to anxious usually....waiting sucks haha

 

[no_borders]

well what i thought was cleaning up with aging apperently was just false hopes and dreams ha ha. its still full of diacetyl. not giving up on the beer, and just out of curiosity, i racked from the keg back to the fermenter and pitched a pack of dry yeast i had around (i would have pitched a starter of lager yeast but i didnt have the time) and im letting the beer free rise from 50 back to 62 degrees to see if they will clean the beer up for me. im keeping the temp kinda low for the yeast hoping it wont produce anything else during the clean up phase. Its kind of an experiment just to see, i was goin to dump the beer anyways, but i have an open vessel and fermentation fridge, i figure why the **** not? cant get any worse

 

[bja]

So it's been lagering for what, 2 weeks?

It's too late now, but after 2 months it would've been fine.

 

[no_borders]

i lagered it for three before deciding to repitch on it. the longer it lagered, the more pronounced and horrible the flavor became. the more i look back at the brewign itslefl, i really think my **** up was not pitching enough yeast. i usually can taste diacetyl during fermentation, i just slipped up on this one. i have brewed succesful lagers before with a much shorter schedule than 2-3 months like people do, unfortunatly this wasn one of them. im letting it go another week with fresh yeast on it to see how it goes, i'll update at tasting time

 

[no_borders]

so i let it sit for a week or two on new yeast, and they cleaned it up real nice, i am a little worried that it wont be as crisp and clean as the original lager was, but as long as it doesnt taste like a ****ing topping for popcorn, i can at least drink it. i am going to let it lager out for a little while to see if it clears up even more and maybe gets a nice clean taste again. i'll keep it updated for sure, been a fun little experiment and as long as the beer doesnt end up gettin dumped in the driveway i'll be a little more at ease. over all a decent learning experience for sure.