This is what we’ve got. I have no experience regarding what the style is supposed to be like, but it’s a really great beer with a fine balance between sweet and bitter components, excellent full mouthfeel and a decent amount of carbonation. It’s somewhat close to a Märzen, with a little less body I’d say. All in all, not too shabby for my first lager ever and the less ideal temperatures. W34/70 lives up to its reputation.

The head collapses quite quickly, which makes the beer go stale rather quickly as well, but it mostly doesn’t live long enough once I have it in my glass anyway. 🤤

I had made a starter (took a mason jar of wort after the boil, chilled it and pitched my yeast into it while the rest of the wort chilled overnight) and it went off really quickly, I had the impression it was all well.

But hell, maybe it really dropped out of solution faster than I thought. It’s somewhat clear (the stuff on the glass is co2 bubbles), even though I’m neither filtering nor storing it cool and only take from the keg what I’m about to drink that evening and put that in a fridge.

So this is how we ended up. It’s a little thin as expected, but drinkable. Also it has become a little sweeter than anticipated, with some hop coming through. Had a commercial Kellerbier the other day and it was like this “done right”. Head is obviously good, its stability Ok.
All in all, it works surprisingly well as a summer beer.

The secondary fermentation stalled as well, I had to shake the keg seriously in order for the yeast to carbonate and consume the priming sugar. So maybe my yeast just was a little weak to begin with.

Yeah, constant temperature is good, but mine only went up and down like 4 °C tops. That the coldest of night vs. the hottest of day. It’s not nothing, I’m aware, but overall, I guess it’s stable enough. In my Vienna Lager, the higher temperatures made the W-34/70 eat up that diacetyl really well apparently.

I’ll aim for more stable temperatures in the future so, as already wrote somewhere here with a little enclosure I want to build for my fermenter to even out mins and maxes.

I have my fermenter exposed to rather significant temperature deltas, so airlock activity maybe is not the best indicator in my case as the air inside expands and contracts. It would suffice of course just to measure daily with the refractometer to see if there still is activity. Not having to though is a tempting idea to me. 😄

For everyone involved and/or curious: I took a regular hydrometer reading last evening, which gave me ~1.011/1.010. So while not too far off, that is still significantly lower than what the Pill sees. Also, when taking some more time to observe, I realized that there is indeed still airlock activity going on. Now that I was sure there was still CO2 being produced, I then peeked under the lid and saw that the Pill had collected quite some dried trub on its waterline. After seriously sanitizing everything, I took it out, cleaned it and pitched it back, though that didn’t result in more realistic measurements. So I guess it’s down to a calibration issue.
What a stupid situation: The only at least halfway reliable measuring instrument after fermentation start remains the saccharometer, which requires a sample of 100 - 200 ml for each measurement, so you can’t do this every day for an elongated period of time without losing significant amounts of product for a batch if this size. Only alternative would be a transparent fermenter like the FermZilla and leave the saccharometer afloat the whole time. Not sure if I like that idea.

At least I got a taste sample this way and I’m happy to report that there is nothing weird going on. It’s not the biggest beer in the world, but summer is coming anyway, so that’s only a half bad thing. I’ll report back with pictures in a few weeks after conditioning. Cheers!

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Forgot to mention my yeast, it’s Fermentis S-04.

The temperature fluctuated from 20.2 to 17.7° C in 10 hours. I don’t know, is that much? Doesn’t look too bad for me, but I’m not yeast. :D

I’ll try agitating the beer a little to see if that sets anything free. It will sit in the bucket for at at least two more days anyway, so I’m not afraid of trub. If that doesn’t help, I’ll also take a look at the hydrometer, thanks for the suggestion.

I’ve got a BrewZilla Gen 4 35L. I don’t know what you’d consider low efficiency, but the unit’s default profile in Brewfather is ~76%, whereas the software calculated roughly 65% efficiency for the batch in question. I’ve got no idea though how that compares to the Braumeister 20L other than the values in Brewfather are rather similar.
What was a first was crushing the grains myself, but mashing on itself went fine. Looking back, I might have wanted to check for starch with iodine, which I even had available. Might do next time. I also might want to add though that I used 13.5 liters of strike water and did what from my understanding is a batch sparge (raising & draining the mash tun, then adding hot water from a second vessel with a jug) with another 15 liters at 80° C. Not perfect for efficiency, I know, but as described my pre-boil gravity was fine. I must just have been to shy on the heat while boiling.

In the back of my head, I have the number of 10% boiloff being desirable, which would match with your 1 hour boil observation.

My last point is that I’m afraid the beer might be too thin as in too much liquid for too few sugars dissolved in it. I didn’t boil off enough water, so I did not concentrate the wort far enough to reach the desired post boil gravity.

Well, that or go to court for a movie collection. I’d phrase my statement differently, but I can see the appeal of the settlement.

No pressure, just a plain plastic bucket. I’d be happy enough to know if my fermentation really stopped, it just seems way too early with just roughly one day of activity.

Airlock activity is so little that it might as well be expanding air (the bucket sits in my garage without extra heating or cooling, subject to the temperature cycles visible in the graph). There is nothing really in the bucket the hydrometer could be stuck against on my opinion, but I‘d have to open it to check - which I’m reluctant to do because of infection risk, obviously.

Taste testing I didn’t think of until now, good thinking. Will do tomorrow. If it’s completely dry, the calculations must be way off. If there is still sugar in it, I assume it’s non-fermentable stuff. I always forget if that’s maltose or dextrose.

Just to give an update on this: I bought the expensive posts as well as new lids from Ali Express. Now the kegs were way more expensive, but still a good deal I suppose.

Mein Großer hat kurz vor seinem dritten Geburtstag meine große Spiegellose in die Finger gekriegt, in die Linse geguckt, den Auslöser festgehalten und ungefähr eine Million Bilder gemacht, ca. die Hälfte davon Selfies. Mag bis heute keins davon löschen, weil’s ja seine ersten eigenen Fotos sind. Macht zufällig generierte Fotorückblicke bisweilen etwas eintönig. :'D

Thanks for pointing that out.

I guess this is probably the solution to my riddle. Thanks.

Will come back with a picture once there’s something I can show off with ;)

I left the bottles alone, zero blasts so far. I already had to try one out of curiosity just recently, and it was mildly carbonated but went stale pretty quickly and had very little head retention. So it seems to me that letting them sit for another week or so is the way to go.

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