Extract Ideas

OK, the first question is, were the lagers you made really lagers? Did they use a lager yeast, ferment cold, and then lager afterwards? If not, u\you might enjoy making true lagers. If so, we'll have to think of something else!

-------->Denny

Yes, they were all proper lagers, most of them used saflager s-23 fermented between 8 and 14 degrees Celsius and allowed to lager for several weeks in the secondary at temps closer to 4 or 5 degrees. I know that the lagering should happen at lower temps but I do not have another fridge to do this in.

Start thinking!

Well, temperature aside, the IPA should not taste anything like the Nut Brown Ale or the German Lagers. From your reply to the other posts, and having the frig. to ferment your lagers in, it sounds like you have the right equipment and knowledge. I use a liquid yeast instead of the powder yeast, the liquid is night and day to the powder. Also, if you do a Czech beer, do you use the same water makeup as the Australian Lager? Find out what the average water makeup in Czech Rep. is and try to match as closely as possible, same for the Australian.

Also, is sounds like you need to graduate to all-grain. Us all-grainers have much more control over the outcome and can provide a more exact style of beer, which sounds like what you want to do.

Carl

You've got it in one, I'm in the process of collecting the gear to do all grain, in the mean time I'll have to stick with mini-mashes.

Most of the time I have been using dried yeasts due to the lower cost but I'm starting to experiment with liquids from Wyeast and Whitelabs.

Check out

---------->Denny