[chrisinestes]

For those of you that have used Lallemand's NovaLager. What were your fermentation temps & times? How did the beer come out, and would you use the same times & temps again? I'm brewing my first lager, a dunkels bock, in a couple days, and am trying to figure out what temps and times at those temps I should ferment at. I saw David Heath's recent video where he used 68F for a week, then raised it to 73F for 2 days. I was thinking 55F at first, then raising the temp to (undecided) for an undecided amount of time. I don't have a particular reason for starting at 55F other than it's withing the yeast's stated temp range.

Thanks!
Chris

[BrewBama]

David might be fermenting under pressure. This will subdue esters even at higher temps.

I have a batch finishing up now. It went from 1.032 to 1.015 or so in a cpl days. …but took about the same amount of time to get from 1.015 to 1.009 which is where it seems to want to settle. The total from 1.032 to 1.009 will be 4 days at noon today. I may let this sit another day or so to see if it drops another point or three.

For some reason I struggled with a fermentation temp on this one. At first I decided 55°F which is kind of my standard lager yeast temp but then bumped it to 60°F. Not quite ale temps but a warm lager temp which I have had success with using other lager yeasts. It did creep up to 63°F a cpl times during active fermentation. Esters due to the bump is yet to be determined. I’m not using pressure but not too concerned.

We’ll see.

Edit: it finished at 1.009 according to the TILT.  There was a small amount of krauzen stuck to the TILT throwing off the FG reading. Today, at ~4.75 days, I kegged the beer and used a finish hydrometer to get 1.007. The beer is very cloudy and I don’t smell or taste any esters at this point.

[ynotbrusum]

My first batch (5 gallons pitched with one packet dry) turned out well at 54-56F for 4 days to finish.  I left it sit until racking at day 7.  Second batch was 10 gallons using the slurry from the first batch at 56F and it was at 1.010 last night (day 2 - 30 hours in).

First batch tasted remarkably clean, with modest red apple ester aroma and slight in flavor (kinda like a Budweiser - but not as pronounced).