Lagers: Pitching and Chilling?

[Brew30]

I did my first lager a while back and realized some specific details I was completely fuzzy on and wondering what was right. The web answers were all over the place so pfft.

OK so this was a German Lager yeast for a Munich Helles. You got your boil all done and I threw in the immersion coil chiller and got her down under 80. At this point I was unsure of the process. I was/did lager at 50, so what's the protocol? Pitch the yeast at 70-75 and then throw her in the fridge and let it go to 50? Or pitch at 70, let it sit for a day, then bring it down gradually to 50? Or are you supposed to bring the wort fast down to 50 right away, then pitch and leave it?

Like I said I got all kinds of answers when I looked but no "this is the way to do it". What I ended up doing was pitching at low 70's, let it kicked off and then brought it down to 50 over a couple of days. Kind of went middle of the road /shrug.

What do ya think?

[backyard brewer]

Well... Here's how I do it.....

I chill with my immersion chiller as cold as I can, then transfer to the fermenter(s) where I pull the wort down to fermentation temp. If it's a light lager, I drop the trub at this point. If it's a dark lager I don't bother.

About 1 week before I will have built up a large starter (2L per 5G). I allow a lager starter to ferment out completely then crrash chill it and let the yeast drop.

After chilling my wort down to ferm temp, I decent most of the liquid off my starter, swirl it up and cold pitch the just slurry. Pitching yeast from cold to warm (relative) will not shock it. So I go from fridge temp (38-40) to ferm temp (48-52) and let it go from there.

I've had excellent results. Prior to having the equipment to pull this off, I've pitched warm(er) and then allowed the wort to cool to lager temp and I'd usually had low attenuation.

[BrewMasterBrad]

Whatever method you use, you are still making beer. So rest easy there. Like Backyard Brewer, I try to chill down to my fermentation temp before adding the yeast. You will need about twice as much yeast as compared to an ale, so either make a starter or pitch more vials. With my recirculating ice water method (through my IC) I can get the wort down to the low 50s with not problems with about 10-15 minutes. For fermentation, I generally just set my temp controller at 50-52 and let it go for a month or so. If you pitch cold and have plenty of healty yeast, you generally don't need a diacetyl rest. After a month, I rack into kegs and lager at 32F for at least a month. For the lager I have fermenting right now, I used Czech Budejovice Lager (White Labs #WLP802) for the first time. I decided to do a diacetyl rest just for the heck of it. It was a very low gravity lager, about 1.040, so I figured the bulk of fermentation was done after 7 days. After 7 days, I raised the temp from 50F to 60F for a couple days then I started lowering the temp 2F every day. It's at 46F today. I'll keep lowering the temp down to 32F before racking into kegs for lagering. Hope this helps.