So I am thinking about my strategy for my first lager attempt.  I am going to be shooting for a Marzen/Oktoberfest style beer. The biggest step will be preparing enough yeast in advance.  My recipe it to make 5.5 gallons of 1.055OG wort.  According to Mr.Malty and the pitching rate calculator, I will need 2 vials in a 1.7 Liter starter!

Luckily I have a 4L jug I think will fit on the stir plate.  This should work just fine.  I may make the starter a little bigger than the calculator recommends, just to be sure I pitch enough yeast for my first try.  I’ll set up the starter 4-5 days in advance giving it plenty time to finish out, and settle.  Then I’ll pour off the spent wort and pitch mostly yeast slurry.

The second phase of this Lager prep, is that after the Oktoberfest is done, I’ll have a rather large cake of lager yeast ready to use.  I am thinking I may plan to pitch some of that cake into two more lager batches; a Munich Helles and an pseudo-American light lager (recipe to follow soon).

Then I’ll lager all three at the same time at 32-34F.

Stay tuned, I’ll post up the All-grain true lager oktoberfest recipe and my psuedo-American lager to the recipe page.

BREW ON!