In the past, I only ever did top fermenting styles. I had to depressurise my bottles sometimes even more than once (using swing top bottles, luckily, this is not too awful). Now I made a Vienna Lager and even though I can‘t even really cold crash the bottles (I have them sit outside at maybe 10°C instead due to a lack in fridge space), my secondary fermentation is way slower than I’m used to. Is that to be expected?
With ales, I opened the bottles the day after starting secondary, and it sometimes was a deafening bang already. Now, I waited maybe even two days and haven‘t got more than a shy little pop.
I used powdered sugar (mixed with sterile water 1:1) to feed the yeast in secondary fermentation because I didn‘t have anything else in the house when I found the time to bottle. Is that maybe an issue?
do you have an update on how secondary is coming along?
I left the bottles alone, zero blasts so far. I already had to try one out of curiosity just recently, and it was mildly carbonated but went stale pretty quickly and had very little head retention. So it seems to me that letting them sit for another week or so is the way to go.
thanks for the update!
Will come back with a picture once there’s something I can show off with ;)
This is what we’ve got. I have no experience regarding what the style is supposed to be like, but it’s a really great beer with a fine balance between sweet and bitter components, excellent full mouthfeel and a decent amount of carbonation. It’s somewhat close to a Märzen, with a little less body I’d say. All in all, not too shabby for my first lager ever and the less ideal temperatures. W34/70 lives up to its reputation.
The head collapses quite quickly, which makes the beer go stale rather quickly as well, but it mostly doesn’t live long enough once I have it in my glass anyway. 🤤
