About IPA maturation schedule

Question

My question is about creating a micro brewery. For an IPA, is it okay to do a two week primary fermentation then 1 day cold crash, carbonating in bright tank and bottling same day?

Answer 1

Good luck with starting a brewery!

A two week fermentation time is a bit long for a commercial brewery, I believe. You can probably shave a few days to a week depending on your gravity, yeast, and pitch rate.

Your cold crashing and carbonation time is going to depend on your equipment. How fast can your equipment chill the volume of beer you will be producing? Obviously more volume will result in slower times. Same with carbonation. If you use a carb stone you can achieve full carbonation in a fraction of the time it would take with just head pressure. Don't forget to include time for fining, as well. That will take at least a day. And for IPAs you need to consider dry hopping time.

So, depending on all the above, you may want to consider blocking out three weeks until you have more information about the specifics of your equipment and process. You also may want to visit breweries of the size your planning and ask them--small brewers are almost always willing to talk about their process, especially if you're not in the same town/neighborhood.

Answer 2

Totally possible. It's all about the style, equipment, and mostly how much yeast.

A standard beer with low ester requirement can be fermented, fined and carbonated in litterally a matter of hours with enough yeast and right equipment.

IPAs are best fresh but many need dry hop time which would add to your production time and is hard to rush.

There's no reason you can't have a 2 week (even much less) brew to serve turn around on an IPA with the right recipe and full or massive yeast pitches.