Best Practices - Lagers

Best practices for lagers 

1. First, make sure you are pitching enough yeast. We recommend 1 million cells / mL / degree Plato. For up to 12ºP beer, our standard pitch rate is sufficient. For higher gravities, we can work with you to determine the amount of yeast you need. Also, make sure you supply enough oxygen. 
2. We recommend pitching the yeast at slightly lower temperature than your set fermentation temperature. This ensures the yeast is not fighting your cooling system at the start of fermentation. The temperature can be raised once 50% attenuation is achieved, and the beer should not be cold crashed until a forced diacetyl test has been passed. 
3. Make sure you do the forced diacetyl test when fermentation is finishing. 
4. Watch oxidation at every step post-pitching. We recommend using a spunding valve toward the end of ferment to naturally carbonate the beer, retain lager yeast aromatics, and avoid oxidation. 
5. Treat lagers gently, watch DO pickup if using a pump to transfer or use CO2/head pressure to transfer (more expensive, but we have observed good results).