Fermenting, racking and bottling a lager...

[CaptainBuckfast]

Hi everyone!
My wife is expecting our second baby in a couple of weeks so brewing will probably be impossible for a while!... not very beer related I hear you say, well...

I figured that if I'm not going to be using my fermenting fridge for a while why not use it for lagering?; also, it'll be a nice treat for SWMBO when it's ready, and she's drinking again... aren't I a good husband.

But I'm a little confused about racking/bottling etc...

Im going to use WLP800 ('cos I've got some in the fridge), I'll do a nice big starter then once it's got going drop it to about 10 degrees until it's at the 2/3rds stage then raise it to about 20 degrees for a diacetyl rest... then I'm confused

Do I then rack it off in another fv and lager at about 3-5 degrees for the 6 weeks, then bottle; will there be enough yeast to bottle with some priming glucose?
or,
Do I bottle straight away with some priming glucose and lager in the bottles at 3-5 degrees for the 6 weeks???

I just don't know, arggghhhh, I'm soooo confused!?#! Please Help!

Eddie.

[adm]

I don't know whether this is the "right" way or not, but I've got a lager going at the moment and here's what I did/am doing:

Big WLP800 yeast starter
Fermented at 12C until a bit over the 2/3 stage (I think I let it ferment for almost 4 weeks due to travel)
Brought it up to 18C and left it there for about 4 days
Cooled to 2C....which is where it's at now - been there for about 2 and a bit weeks so far.

All this has been in a 10G plastic bucket (42L of beer), on the yeast so far. As soon as I've got a couple of cornies free, I'll rack into those and then stick them back into the fridge and drop the temperature to 0C if it will go that far, then leave it for about as long as I can bear....

[CaptainBuckfast]

Cheers adm,

Are you then going to force carbonate? Which unfortunately isn't something I can do due to the bottling... unless I can persuade SWMBO to let me buy a couple of cornies, which I think maybe unlikely at the moment!

Thanks again, Eddie.

[adm]

I will indeed be force carbonating......although I may bottle half and keg the other half.

If I do bottle some of it, I doubt there'll be enough yeast in suspension to carbonate properly, so I'll probably make a starter using a stovetop mini lager malt mash and a pack of S23 dried lager yeast, then put some of that into each bottle. Not sure how much to use though.... I think in "real" lager brewing, they'd use some of the yeast off another currently fermenting batch.

Alternately, it might be feasible to rack the beer into a bottling bucket, then add a bit of the yeast cake from the bottom of the FV along with some sugar....