krausening lager?

[Velkyal]

I have plans to go all-grain as soon as I get full time work and have the spare cash to buy the necessary bits and pieces, including an old fridge for controlling fermenting and lagering temperatures when I make my pilsners (I am something of a pilsner fascist mind, I intend only to use pilsner malt, saaz hops, yeast and water - 10 years in Prague will do that to you).

One think I want to do though during the lagering process is to krausen the lager and thus make what Czechs call "kvasnicove". Does anyone have any experience of making this kind of lager?

[Mill Rat]

No experience, but I did consider it and decided not to do it. Krausening is the addition of adding freshly fermenting wort to a finished beer to carbonate it. This is a handy technique if you always have a fresh batch of just-brewed wort on hand when you're ready to put the beer into a bright tank, or in the case of a homebrewer, bottle or keg. A no-brainer, really, for the commercial brewery, a real PITA for the homebrewer. It might be worth it as a one-off just to say you've done it, but that's a degree of complexity I'm not willing to add to my brew day. OTOH, if you want to be really demented about it, no one here's going to try to talk you out of it.