Craft Range Blond Lager kit - fermentation temperatures?

nimrod86

Hi everyone,

Going for my second go at making a Craft Range Blonde Lager kit. Last made it about three years ago and wasn't experienced with anything but ciders. From what I've read on here and other forums this kit comes with an ale yeast, and the instructions say to ferment at between 20°c-24°c for 10 days. This seems to go against everything I've read about lager brewing! Can I ferment this kit at lower temperatures like a real lager, or would I need a different yeast?

I've recently built myself a fermenatation fridge using a BrewPi setup, and was wondering if some more experienced lager makers could help me figure out temperatures to brew this at. With my software, I can control the exact temperature (plus/minus 0.1°c), and vary the temperature for different days of the fermentation, like in the picture below:



Would anyone have thoughts on what temperature for what days to use? Does the above one seem right? Any and all thoughts/advice appreciated! Really hoping that bringing temperature control to the brewing will help stop flowery flavours developing like last time when I just fermented in a bucket on the kitchen floor!

BeerNut

There's no way of coddling a kit into being high-quality beer. If you want the sort of control over the finished product that you're talking about here you need to design the recipe yourself. It's not a big leap if you already have the equipment.

nimrod86

BeerNut wrote: »

There's no way of coddling a kit into being high-quality beer. If you want the sort of control over the finished product that you're talking about here you need to design the recipe yourself. It's not a big leap if you already have the equipment.

Fair enough, so best bet would be just to do as this says and see how it goes making use of the ability to keep a constant temperature?

Probably a sacrilegious thing to say on a forum like this, but what i'd love to try make is a pale lager similar to Heineken/Budweisser... but I haven't had much look finding recipes for it. (Or at least recipes I can understand! No idea where to get some of the ingriedients they mention!)

I'm not a fan of pale ales and their flowery flavours. Just looking to make a clean, crisp lager. Any thoughts where to start?

BeerNut

nimrod86 wrote: »

Fair enough, so best bet would be just to do as this says and see how it goes making use of the ability to keep a constant temperature?

Sure. You can do a low-and-slow fermentation on a kit lager and it will make for a better result than just room temperature. If nothing else it'll help you get the hang of your set-up.

nimrod86 wrote: »

Just looking to make a clean, crisp lager. Any thoughts where to start?

With a clean, crisp blonde ale. Pale lager is the toughest style to brew and you need to be in absolute control of every element of the process. You will need to learn all-grain brewing, and you can do extract brewing as a stepping stone on the way there if you like.

Your issue with pale ale flavours sounds mostly hop related. Avoid the new world varieties and use traditional lager hops like Saaz or Hersbrucker. A simple blonde ale recipe of pale malt and Saaz, fermented cool, should get you a lot of the way there.

Most importantly, talk to other home brewers in real life. Go to your local homebrew club meetings, taste other people's beer and get feedback on your own. They'll be able to give you pointers that nobody on the internet can.

nimrod86

Thanks for all the advice BeerNut. I'm a way off all grain I reckon, but it would interest me down the line. At the moment I'd have no way to grind it all up so extract it will have to be.

I signed up the national homebrew club site the other day, jut waiting for the admin to approve me hopefully! Will look into what my local club is and start that journey. This very quickly becomes more obsession than hobby by the looks of things!

Dr. Dregz

Hi Nimrod,

Hope you are still brewing and enjoying, I have exactly the same question, purchased the craft blonde lager kit from Homebrewwest who have some really good extract kits, and I was surprised to see 20-24 degrees as the fermentation temperature as it says lager yeast on the packet. I have done their pilsner kits several times at 15 degrees over the best part of a month and they have been great. So do you remember what temperature you fermented at, and more imprtantly how did it turn out? I sent HBW an email but I know they are incredibly busy. FYI I reckon I have done about 50 kites with a fairly high success rate (havebuilt a brewing box with a thermostat and greenhouse heater), if I had more time I would definitely go all grain, but I find the beer I make from the extract kits are WAY better than 90% of the shop beers here in France (and so do most of my French friends!)

Many thanks in advance

Wil