Tue Dec 04, 2012 4:48 pm
I can really only say what I do, which might not be the the best, but I have been happy with the results. I slowly raise the temps for a diacetyl rest (to ~60F) in primary after activity appears to die off (normally starting day 14-15 day, and ending on day 21 +/-3. At that point *almost* all the yeast activity should be complete. I then slowly drop the temperature to 34F or 32F. To minimize suckback from the airlock, I generally transfer to the keg part way through this crashing process. It is best if the cooling is not done quickly, as the yeast still has some things to clean up. Enough yeast should still be in suspension, though, such that there is no issue in pulling the yeast off of the cake at any point after the d-rest. After this point I store the keg in my ~40F basement until ready (1-2 months), though if I had fridge space to store it colder, I certainly would. It just seems to take longer to lager at warmer temperatures.
Differences from my setup to yours:
If you don't keg, you will want to use a secondary instead. In this case, the suck back issue is not avoided by transferring early. If it were me then, I wouldn't transfer until after fully cooling it. Maybe cool a little lower than lager temps such that after warming up in the secondary, some CO2 will be released from the beer to push out some of the O2 from transferring.
I don't make many alts (but quite a few lagers), so the yeast might act slightly differently. The only real issue I would see would be the crash cooling/slow cooling potentials. I would expect that since WLP036 is not highly flocculant, the yeast will still work on cleaning things up while cooling, hence you might benefit from a slow cooling regiment.
Temps: get it as close to freezing as you can without freezing it for the lagering stage. Apart from some small work by the yeast, the main point (in my experience) is to get as much shit as possible to drop out as possible. As long as you let the yeast acclimate to the temperature, any activity they want to perform will still occur at low temps. More stuff will drop at lower temperatures.
At least you have one more data point now. Hopefully not too useless.
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