Aging/Conditioning Your Beer

[The_Professor]

I have a question I want to throw out there.

Brewer A ferments his beer for two weeks (confirming FG over a couple days), lets it carbonate for 2-3 weeks as needed, and conditions it for two weeks after that.

Brewer B ferments his beer for four weeks (confirming FG over a couple days), lets it carbonate for 2-3 weeks as needed, and after a couple days in the fridge serves it right away.

What's the difference in the aging time in the fermenter as opposed to post carbonation?

[berryman]

I have a question I want to throw out there.

Brewer A ferments his beer for two weeks (confirming FG over a couple days), lets it carbonate for 2-3 weeks as needed, and conditions it for two weeks after that.

Brewer B ferments his beer for four weeks (confirming FG over a couple days), lets it carbonate for 2-3 weeks as needed, and after a couple days in the fridge serves it right away.

What's the difference in the aging time in the fermenter as opposed to post carbonation?

This is a very good question and way open for debate. As we all know different styles of beers need a different amount of condition time, one reason I like to secondary. I get my aging time in and can bottle when I want but don't do it on every brew. I have had some heavy beers that I have aged in a secondary and some that I have bottle aged and don't really see much difference in them as long as the time is right..........good question,,

[Beer-lord]

I've pretty much assumed that the extra time in the fermenter allowed the yeast to 'clean up' and basically make the beer better. I've done both in the past and can really tell little difference. 3 weeks just works for me and my brewing schedule and usually does the job.

[mashani]

The biggest difference would be how much of yeast your beer is in contact with that is available to "do something".

Where that might matter is if a whole bunch of off flavors were produced during fermentation that are caused by something the yeast can eat/uptake when they run out of other things to ferment. Stuff like acetaldehyde, diacetyl and the like. "matter" is likely just a timing thing vs. an it will never go away thing, unless there is simply too much blah for the amount of remaining yeast to deal with. Which I suppose is possible if your fermentation was just nasty.

If your beer doesn't have those problems, then AFAIK there is no difference.

I pitch enough yeast that I don't have those problems ever anymore, and just bottle everything and if it needs aging then I let it age in the bottle.

Lots of beers that people think need long aging, I don't have this problem anymore really, as again I pitch so much yeast that whatever it is that causes the need for it, and I think my low pressure (semi-open) fermenting helps too especially when using true top cropping yeasts which were selected over history for that sort of fermentation. Most of my beer even strong Belgians are good to go pretty quickly. My beer always tastes *good* out of the fermenter, unless I just made bad beer.

NOW... I will throw a wrench into this because Beer Lord sort of bring it up, but his comment is more of an "it depends" thing.

If you filter and force carb, you are changing this from comparing big apples to small apples, to comparing big apples to a different variety of fruit. Because your taking out the entire yeast part of the equation in the keg/bottles.

If you intend to filter and force carb, then if there are off flavors that could be cleaned up by the yeast, you *have* to secondary it or at least leave it in the primary longer.

Those types of flavors will not go away without the yeast still involved.

Now if you just rack into your keg, you still have yeast involved, as long as you don't chill it immediately.

[braukasper]

A few of my high ABV brews need a year to condition. Several months in secondary which gets sugar feedings then bottled in champagne bottles some of my sours take about six months

[ScrewyBrewer]

I think, using a healthy pitch of yeast, most Ales are done fermenting in under 7 days. Not everyone, but I like to, raise the temperature .5F daily for the next 7 days to allow the yeast time to process any remaining flavor precursors before going dormant. For wheat beers 7-10 days is plenty of time to chill, carbonate and then begin drinking. For Kolsch adding another 4 weeks before serving really improves the taste and clarity of the beer. Even the 8.5% Wee Heavy was only on the yeast for 2 weeks before priming and bottling, some bottles were cold conditioned for up to 26 months.

The outlier is the Belgian Strong Ale for our club's Big Barrel! brew. It will sit on the yeast in the primary for 4 weeks, not to clean up off flavors, but because of our barrel filling schedule. We will pick up a 55 gallon oak barrel from Laird's AppleJack distillery in a few weeks and fill the barrel later that day. That beer will age in the barrel for 4 to 8 weeks, depending on the taste of samples taken weekly, before bottling and conditioning for 9-12 months.