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First of all, there is no rule about time for beers. The beer makes its own schedule. In terms of aging, there are no rules either. The beer is ready when it tastes ready to you. I prefer IPAs without a lot of age on them so that the hop character remains fresh. But you should try one occasionally and see what you think.
8
You will need to add priming sugar if the beer has reached its terminal gravity with the yeast being used.
In this example, despite the 80% attenuation the remaining 20% is not usually fermentable sugars. Its comprised of protein, dextrans and other molecules in solution that are largely ignored by your primary yeast strain.
Lastly, reported attenuation ...
6
It's hard to say since growlers can be made very strongly and more thinly for just carrying final product from a keg to several thirsty mouths. Most growlers with straight sides are not designed to hold the pressure of natural carbonation - especially if they have suffered some wear and shocks over time. I've had one explode on me with just beer in it, and ...
5
There are two ways to get carbonated beer in bottles: natural conditioning, and force carbonation.
Natural conditioning is a process in which a small amount of fermentable sugar is added to the beer at bottling time. The yeast in the beer will ferment the sugar, adding carbon dioxide and a small amount of alcohol. Because the yeast become active to produce ...
5
Generally speaking, the amount of time for proper conditioning after completion of primary fermentation increases with the OG of the post-boil wort. It can also be dependent on beer style and personal taste.
A low gravity (1.040's) ale can be ready in 2 weeks. A high gravity russian imperial stout can sometimes take 6 months to develop the flavors desired ...
5
There's no reason you can't ferment a 2.5 gal. batch in a 5 gal. gal. carboy, at least through 3-4 weeks of primary fermentation.
5
I take it from the title that you added the priming sugar and bottled the beer, then put it in the fridge?
If that's the case, you'll probably be OK. Just let the beer come up to room temperature and leave them alone for two weeks. Open one and see if it's carbonated. If it is, job well done. Relax and drink your beer.
Otherwise, the yeast was knocked back ...
5
Yep. Just keep it away from sun light. I do this all winter without problems.
5
It's fairly safe to say that bottle conditioning at -5°c will not yield good results.
Even high ABV beers stored below freezing will form ice crystals and force a separation of the water and ethanol. (Eisbock)
While many yeasts can survive freezing temperatures the become dormant or have their metabolism slowed down so much they no longer perform useful ...
5
"Rafts" or anything floating at this stage sounds infected.
If you had good fermentation it's unlikely it will be harmful to sample.
Open one, see if you can recover the floaty.
If its white / creamy color. I would sample taste the beer.
If it's blue / black. Dump em.
4
I agree with the advice given in the other answer that your own judgement tells you when the beer is ready. However it's still possible to give an estimate: I'd say 5 weeks from brewday for low alcohol, under 4%, 7 weeks for medium - 4-6.5% For big beers, you'll need to see how the beer cleans up.
As others have said with an IPA, on the one hand you want to ...
4
I would leave it in the keg - there's little to gain from racking, and you risk contaminating or oxidizing the beer. An Ale yeast has a hard time conditioning at fridge temps, but the beer will condition in the keg if you take it out the fridge and leave it for 10-14 days at room temp, around 64-70F/17-20C. You don't have to bleed off the CO2.
Once the ...
4
Shandies (and Radlers for that matter) are beer cocktails from their respective home countries. A true shandy is a mix of light wheat or lager beer with lemonade and done in the glass. Companies like Miller are capitalizing by putting it in a bottle. The strip the yeast out of finished beer, blend with lemonade and then carbonate it on the way to the ...
4
Don't rely on Beersmith/software for the timing of any stage of the process. Brewing is predictable to some extent, but it's not that clear cut.
Ferment your beer until it's done. You already see to understand the stable FG rule so that's good.
After fermentation, you'll transfer to a bottling bucket and add your sugar. You want the beer to condition (...
4
I would just wait until you get back. Just because you aren't racking to secondary doesn't mean the extra couple weeks in the fermenter won't do any good. It might be quasi-marginal, but erring on the side of more time in the fermenter will just ensure that your yeast have cleaned up after themselves by the time you bottle.
Dry-hop the day you get back, ...
3
To build on what tobias said:
In both scenarios, if the beer is not crystal clear before bottling, the amount sediment in the bottles will be greater. You can reduce, but not eliminate, sediment in naturally conditioned beer by ensuring the beer is clear before bottling.
The more sediment you start with, the more you will end up with. There are several ...
3
You may or may not need extra time, but my experience is that it never hurts to give the beer more time. 4-5 weeks will be fine. The best thing to do would be to start taking gravity readings after 3-4 weeks and taste the sample. Between the gravity and the taste, you should be able to tell when it's done.
3
A 3 Gallon Carboy is $20 USD i think. I would much rather let my beer condition the proper length of time then be dissatisfied with the end product. After all about $20ish worth of materials probably went into the beer no?
As to bottle conditioning vs secondary conditioning. While yes you can simply condition in the bottles you will be waiting longer and ...
3
Over a week or two, the temperature swings wont make much difference since there is little flavor contribution from the fermentation that goes on in bottle conditioning - for a high gravity beer, the priming sugar represents only about 1% of fermentables.
It sounds like after a week, fermentation of the priming sugar is pretty much done - the remaining ...
3
Real Ale, that's
"beer brewed from traditional ingredients, matured by secondary fermentation in the container from which it is dispensed, and served without the use of extraneous carbon dioxide". (CAMRA)
As homebrewers, we can emulate this by:
Not pasturizing our beer...(ok that was easy!)
preparing the corny for use as secondary/fining/dispensing vessel ...
3
IMHO the answer is a both. The CO2 from the bulb contributes to carbonation in that it keeps a atmosphere of CO2 over the beer and keeps it under slight pressure. It also a prevents a partial vacuum developing above the beer while its being poured from the keg. Without a CO2 bulb supplying the CO2 to fill the keg, one would have to admit air to allow the ...
3
Floating things in the bottle after that period of time doesn't sound good... Did you add some sort of solids like dry hops or spices to the fermentation? Could be yeast of course, but this usually settles at the bottom. Or did you shake it?
One way to be sure: try it. It should be carbonated and if it doesn't smell bad it is probably good to go.
To ...
2
Its fine. There isn't anything magical going on. Its just cold temps and stuff falling out of solution to make clear beer and let the flavors develop. I find that most of my lagers taste great right out of the fermentor before I lager. If your primary fermentation was done correctly there almost isn't any need for an extended lager period on flavor.
So ...
2
For a hefeweizen (or any wheat beer) secondary can be detrimental because these beer are best fresh. Once primary is done, the prime drinking window starts to close.
I just kegged a hefe myself, 16 days in primary 1050 down to 1012. Very nice taste going into the keg. So your two an a half weeks sounds perfect to me.
If the beer has some sweetness to it ...
2
It is really as simple as putting in some priming sugar and letting it go to "keg condition" for carbonation.
In a true real ale situation you might rack from primary to keg when there is still <10% of the sugar remaining. In this case you are not adding any priming sugar.
But there's nothing more to it than sealing the keg and getting the beer to ...
2
If you're kegging the beer, age it until it passes a diacetyl test. This might not actually mean waiting at all, but if it is chilled before that cleanup is done, you might have an unpleasant surprise later.
Bottle conditioning seems to be more forgiving since the second bit of fermentation helps things get cleaned up.
After that, its just matter of taste,...
2
The simple answer is yes: the yeast will actively be fermenting in your bottle, which will contribute to the flavor. However, the effect on the overall flavor will be very very small. I've read that some commercial breweries actually bottle condition with different strains of yeast, so as not to allow harvesting of their proprietary strains that do the main ...
2
It comes down to the amount of control you have over the process. A typical homebrewer fermenting in a basement, pitching yeast directly from a small sachet or vial is dealing with variable temperature and variable viability/pitching rates, and so doesn't have as much control as a commercial brewery, which is the main reason why turn around times are ...
2
The shortest time I've ever given a beer from grain to glass (including 2 days of forced carbonation) was 19 days, and it was a 1.087 Imperial IPA. That said, I do recall it tasting better after a week in the keg, and the malt bill was a 50/50 split of American and English 2-row, so nothing fancy aside from the tremendous amount of hops.
In my experience, ...
2
No, there really isn't. I guess I have to enter more to be able to post this, but there's really nothing more to say.
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
