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Good morning gents,
I'm a tiny bit bored with the mundane bit of work I'm busy with, so I'm writing this in the 2-min breaks I take in between. Hopefully I can pique some interest here and see if someone else can also do a similar test. Let's see.
To the point. A few weeks ago I brewed a Vienna lager thing. It was a pretty simply recipe - 43% Pale malt, 43% Vienna malt and 14% CaraMunich II. Fermented with S-23 in lager temps (14°C for 2 weeks), so it was in the end leaning closer toward being made like a true lager is made. However, since "lager" doesn't refer to the fermentation but rather to the storage post-fermentation, I figured I'll run a test. I wanted to see how big of a difference you really get when you lager your beer hot vs cold. So, this is what I did...
I bottled the entire batch in the same manner. Carbonation drop per bottle, so the carbonation should be pretty similar. After bottling I set all bottles in the same crate in the same cool environment (around 18°C) so that it can carbonate for 2 weeks. Since it's the same batch, and even bottled in the same bottles (Grolsch swingtops), I have a lot of confidence that the beer is the same, and only the lagering will have an effect here.
After 2 weeks I took two bottles out of the crate and stuck them in their "testing environments". The one fridge was stuck to the back of my fridge, set to 4°C. Apparently lagering needs to be done at 5°C or less for "maximum effect", so I figured 4°C is a good temperature to select.
The other bottle was not stored in the fridge. It was Cremora'd, in other words, stuck on top of the fridge, right above the cooling element on the back. While it's not "hot", per se, it's possibly the most consistently "warm" area in my house, consistently sitting at around 23°C, so I figured it'll be a good place to set the beer. Set it on top at the back of the fridge, and there it's waiting.
The testing will commence at the end of September, if I can hold on for so long. We'll see. I bottled the batch on the 14th of July, if I'm not mistaken, so the beers have been sitting in the bottles now for 7 weeks. The cold stored one has been sitting in the fridge now for 5 of those 7 weeks, and I want to give it at least 8 weeks, so let's see how things turn out.
PS thread was created now so that I can just have the numbers and dates and stuff down. I'm going to forget them if I don't keep track of them for now. Let's see if you guys have some ideas or predictions about what's going to happen.
I also have to add I am no expert on beer testing. I'm not a judge and I won't be able to tell which is technically "better". I'll just be comparing them, side by side, possibly in a blind test (will ask my wife to help), and give my results on the experiment. I know what to look for in these beers and that helps, so I'll be able to note which beer is more malt-forward, which has stronger notes of biscuits, nuts, malt, sweetness, bitterness and that crisp bite that I've come to detect in the others I've been tasting along the way. I can give or promise nothing more, but also nothing less, so let's see!
I'm a tiny bit bored with the mundane bit of work I'm busy with, so I'm writing this in the 2-min breaks I take in between. Hopefully I can pique some interest here and see if someone else can also do a similar test. Let's see.
To the point. A few weeks ago I brewed a Vienna lager thing. It was a pretty simply recipe - 43% Pale malt, 43% Vienna malt and 14% CaraMunich II. Fermented with S-23 in lager temps (14°C for 2 weeks), so it was in the end leaning closer toward being made like a true lager is made. However, since "lager" doesn't refer to the fermentation but rather to the storage post-fermentation, I figured I'll run a test. I wanted to see how big of a difference you really get when you lager your beer hot vs cold. So, this is what I did...
I bottled the entire batch in the same manner. Carbonation drop per bottle, so the carbonation should be pretty similar. After bottling I set all bottles in the same crate in the same cool environment (around 18°C) so that it can carbonate for 2 weeks. Since it's the same batch, and even bottled in the same bottles (Grolsch swingtops), I have a lot of confidence that the beer is the same, and only the lagering will have an effect here.
After 2 weeks I took two bottles out of the crate and stuck them in their "testing environments". The one fridge was stuck to the back of my fridge, set to 4°C. Apparently lagering needs to be done at 5°C or less for "maximum effect", so I figured 4°C is a good temperature to select.
The other bottle was not stored in the fridge. It was Cremora'd, in other words, stuck on top of the fridge, right above the cooling element on the back. While it's not "hot", per se, it's possibly the most consistently "warm" area in my house, consistently sitting at around 23°C, so I figured it'll be a good place to set the beer. Set it on top at the back of the fridge, and there it's waiting.
The testing will commence at the end of September, if I can hold on for so long. We'll see. I bottled the batch on the 14th of July, if I'm not mistaken, so the beers have been sitting in the bottles now for 7 weeks. The cold stored one has been sitting in the fridge now for 5 of those 7 weeks, and I want to give it at least 8 weeks, so let's see how things turn out.
PS thread was created now so that I can just have the numbers and dates and stuff down. I'm going to forget them if I don't keep track of them for now. Let's see if you guys have some ideas or predictions about what's going to happen.
I also have to add I am no expert on beer testing. I'm not a judge and I won't be able to tell which is technically "better". I'll just be comparing them, side by side, possibly in a blind test (will ask my wife to help), and give my results on the experiment. I know what to look for in these beers and that helps, so I'll be able to note which beer is more malt-forward, which has stronger notes of biscuits, nuts, malt, sweetness, bitterness and that crisp bite that I've come to detect in the others I've been tasting along the way. I can give or promise nothing more, but also nothing less, so let's see!
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