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drewseslu
05-25-2009, 10:01 AM
I am working on a plan to brew up a Baltic Porter, but I am totally maxed out on production on our tiny brewery for our tiny restaurant.
The plan is to get the beer fermented, d-rested, crashed to drop 'enough' of the yeast out, carbonated and keg it for lagering until winter.
I am shooting for around 9% ABV and have no filter, so I will need to just crash the yeast out. Whirlfloc T will be used in the kettle.
The plan is to pitch 5 gallons of WL 830 German Lager into 4.5bbls of 21 Plato wort.
Is it reasonable to assume that this amount of this strain (very healthy from a 11.5 Plato ferment at a neighboring brewery) could ferment this out to 4 Plato (apparent) in about a week, starting at 55 dF and ramping up to 60-ish dF at the end of fermentation? Ramping up at the end should shorten the D-rest a bit, as well.
That puts the beer at around 1.5 weeks and maybe 3-3.5 weeks for crashed cold conditiong before kegging to lager the remaining time.
Does this all seem reasonable? Or should I just continue my cries of "WE NEED MORE TANKS!!"?

Jim Lieb
05-25-2009, 12:37 PM
My experience with the WLP830 strain, your time frame should be close. If the yeast is ready to go like you said there should not be any problems. Worst case with that yeast would be 14 days, but at your temps that should not happen.

As long as the yeast is not past 10 generations and was harvested correctly every time it should flock out and clear pretty well within your time frame listed, but I would plan on the 3.5 weeks to be safe,

Jim Lieb
Rocky River Brewing C.