Shortly after brewing my sparkling ale, I read through the recipe for the lager I planned on making next, and suddenly remembered a major difference between lagers and ales:

Lagers take about 3 months to condition while ales only take a week or two.

This time requirement is the main reason everything I have made so far has been an ale, along with the fact that it would require another 3 or 4 cases of bottles.

We bottled the sparkling ale Sunday and I went ahead and brewed the lager last night.  This way I have something to drink while I wait.

The ale, or sparkling beer, as I decided to call it, will be ready around the 27th.  The lager should be ready for bottling this weekend, so I will probably buy bottles from my local homebrew store tomorrow.

In case you are keeping track, the sparkling beer was BEER dad brew #14 and red lager is #15.

More …

I noticed yesterday our porter was ready for bottling, so we spent the evening sanitizing, priming, filling, and capping the bottles. It’s a lot of work, but worth it because we ended up with just under 70 bottles for only $30.

My porter now gets to condition for about a week before I raid it. You could drink some now, but it would be too sugary to enjoy. It will end up almost exactly 5% abv and slightly darker than the picture a few posts below.

We bottled the amber bock last night and are now patiently awaiting it’s arrival in our fridge.  In the process I was forced to finish my bitter so I would have enough bottles.

I will be beta tasting the bock later this week and will be researching how to make a good wine because my and BEER mom’s 2nd anniversary is just around the corner.

My amber bock will be about 6% alcohol when it’s ready.