Confirmation of JZ's Lagering Technique Please

[ajdelange]

Would it hurt anything to lager it on the yeast cake?

No, not at all. In fact if you lager and store it on the yeast cake it will stay fresh for over a year. Well, at the end of a year the diacetyl may start to creep up a bit but it is certainly good for at least a year. This assumes you are storing cold as well as on the yeast. And, of course, you can't move the keg as this will kick up sediment but it usually settles pretty quickly after that (a few days). If you need to take some off somewhere then just rack to another keg.

[brewinhard]

Would it hurt anything to lager it on the yeast cake?

No, not at all. In fact if you lager and store it on the yeast cake it will stay fresh for over a year. Well, at the end of a year the diacetyl may start to creep up a bit but it is certainly good for at least a year. This assumes you are storing cold as well as on the yeast. And, of course, you can't move the keg as this will kick up sediment but it usually settles pretty quickly after that (a few days). If you need to take some off somewhere then just rack to another keg.

By "fresh" do you mean there won't even be signs of autolysis or oxidation after a period of 1 year. Sounds pretty crazy. What if the lager is brewed in a bucket vs carboy? Still one year, I am guessing not. Maybe my technique sucks.

[ajdelange]

Yes, that is what I meant but I wasn't thinking of perhaps the most important aspect of this when I wrote it and that is how it gets into the keg which is, for this kind of longevity, directly from a cylindroconical by counterpressure transfer with plenty of yeast in suspension. The beer is thus never exposed to the atmosphere from the time the CO2 blanket is formed until it is in the glass. I suppose there are ways a similarly anaerobic transfer could be effected from carboy (but not, perhaps, bucket) and I suppose that if enough yeast were in suspension that perhaps they could scavenge at least part of any oxygen picked up during the transfer but no, I would not expect to get as long out of a beer done in a bucket or carboy.