So I'm a newer brewer with some extract brews and two biab brews under my belt and I want to brew a Pilsner. This time of year the garage is perfect for cold fermentation at a pretty stable 50 degrees. I'm pretty confident on brewing and fermenting the beer, but I have questions on the lagering phase. I don't have a fridge big enough to house a secondary for lagering, so I was planning on priming and bottling before lagering. My question is how long should I wait before moving the beer to the fridge for lagering? My ales always seem to carb up in a bit less than a week, do lagers take the same amount of time to carb up? Am I really going to miss out on anything not lagering the beer altogether in a secondary? Thank you guys for any input, really have enjoyed the site and so glad I decided to try biab brewing.

Hey Pete,
Thanks for the reply and all the info! I've been thinking about the things you mentioned in your reply and I think what I am going to do is have a little bit of an experiment. I am going to take my 3-gallon batch and split half of it to a smaller fermenter that I can move to the fridge for lagering. After 4 weeks of that I will move them to bottling and conditioning for a couple weeks. Then I will take the second half bottle it, let it condition to carb up for a couple weeks, then move the bottles to the fridge for lagering for four weeks. After six weeks time I can have a little taste test and see what the differences might be. Do you see anything I may be overlooking with my ideas? I'm going to look for that fast lagering technique on brulosphy you mentioned this afternoon, I've always liked the stuff those guys cover.
Matt

Sounds good I would like to check out your recipe. I've been wanting to brew an Oktoberfest too.

Just finished scaling a recipe for my pilsner that I got from byo.com.

Here it is

Bohemian Pilsener
(3 gallons/11.4 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.056 (13.9 °P) FG = 1.016 (4.2 °P)
IBU = 40 SRM = 4 ABV = 5.3%

Ingredients

6.35 lb. (2880 g) Durst continental Pilsner malt (or similar) 2 °L
0.45 lb. (204 g) Briess Carapils® malt (or similar) 2 °L
4.83 AAU Czech Saaz hops (0.85 oz./24 g for 3.5% alpha acid) (60 min)
5.8 AAU Czech Saaz hops (0.99 oz./28 g for 3.5% alpha acid) (30 min)
2.9 AAU Czech Saaz hops (0.53 oz./15 g of 3.5% alpha acid) (10 min)
2.9 AAU Czech Saaz hops (0.53 oz./15 g of 3.5% alpha acid) (0 min)
White Labs WLP800 (Pilsner Lager), Wyeast 2001 (Urquell) or Fermentis Saflager S-23 yeast

Step by Step

Mill the grains and dough-in targeting a mash of around 1.5 quarts of water to 1 pound of grain (a liquor-to-grist ratio of about 3:1 by weight) and a temperature of 154 °F (68 °C). Hold the mash at
154 °F (68 °C) until enzymatic conversion is complete. Infuse the mash with near boiling water while stirring or with a recirculating mash system raise the temperature to mash out at 168 °F (76 °C). Sparge slowly with 170 °F (77 °C) water, collecting wort until the pre-boil kettle volume is around 6.5 gallons (25 L) and the gravity is 1.044 (10.9 °P).

The total wort boil time is 90 minutes, which helps reduce the SMM (S-methyl methionine) present in the lightly-kilned Pilsner malt and results in less DMS (Dimethyl Sulfide) in the finished beer. Add the first hop addition with 60 minutes remaining in the boil. The other hop additions are at 30, 10, and zero minutes left in the boil. Add Irish moss or other kettle finings with 15 minutes left in the boil.

Chill the wort to 50 °F (10 °C) and aerate thoroughly. The proper pitch rate is 20 grams of properly rehydrated dry yeast, four packages of liquid yeast or one package of liquid yeast in a
9-liter starter.

Ferment around 50 °F (10 °C) until the yeast drops clear. With healthy yeast, fermentation should be complete in two weeks or less, but don’t rush it. Cold fermented lagers take longer to ferment than ales or lagers fermented at warmer temperatures. If desired, perform a diacetyl rest during the last few days of active fermentation.

Rack the finished beer to a keg and force carbonate or rack to a bottling bucket, add the priming sugar, and bottle. Target a carbonation level of 2 to 2.5 volumes.

A month or more of cold conditioning at near freezing temperatures will mellow some of the flavors and improve the beer. Serve at 43 to 46 °F (6 to 8 °C).

This is exactly the recipe I was looking for! I would like to try BIAB before getting too deep in the BiaBacus and this saves me scaling to my mini BIAB capacity though I'll still calculate it out with my equipment stats. Will my 5 gallon kettle be large enough to mash this recipe? This would be my first BIAB and my first lager (have a new fermentation chamber I'd like to try out) Is this being too ambitious with trying too many advanced techniques at once?
Thanks