I can totally understand why many seasoned brewers will wait a full 3-4 weeks until they know the beer is fully conditioned. However, for newer brewers, I would highly recommend tasting at least 1 bottle each week. It will help them to learn the early flavors of undercarbed beer, and green beer. It will help improve their ability to discern these flavors over true infected flavors or true off flavors when a beer *should* be completely conditioned, but each person will have their own style, just like anything else.
Find what works for you and do it; don't worry about what anyone else does or doesn't do. If it works for you, then be happy and enjoy your process.
And this teaches you how? I'm a "seasoned brewer" to me "Understanding how carbonation develops" is really un important, it's gonna be flat, it's gonna be slightly carbed, or it's going to be carbed. There's nothing to learn about. Who really cares about the other stages, it's only when it's finished does it matter.
It's the same with green beer. What's the point of wanting to know how it develops or changes. How's it going to help us make better beer? It's AFTER the beer has passed the window of greeness where we find out if our recipe/brewing/fermentation process is sound or not. Green beer is an evolution, in the process to maturation. It doesn't tell us anything. Only after a beer is drinkable do we find out if we did a good job. And THOSE off flavors are what we learn from. Not what the beer taste like on the journey.
I just never had gleaned anything substantive from that. Despite the rationalization that many new brewer say is for 'educational purposes' I find there's very little point to tasting a beer at 1 week, and again at 2....that to me just means there 2 less beers that are actually tasting good and are ready at the end. I don't buy budweiser because I don't like to taste "bad" beer. So why would I drink my own beer when it was "bad" especially since I know it's going to be delicious a few weeks later.
It's a great rationalization, and I hear it every time I make my assertion. But the thing to remember is that since every beer is different that 5 day old Ipa you may have decided to crack open is not going to taste anything like that 5 day old brown ale you opened early in your next batch. They're two different animals. There are so many tiny variations in things like ambient temp at fermentation and carbonation, pitch count phases of the moon, that even if you brewed your same batch again and cracked a bottle at the exact same early time on the previous batch, the beer, if you could remember how it tasted, more than likely wouldn't taste the same at that phase....Heck even in the same batch if you had grabbed a different bottle it may seem carbed or tasting differently at that point.
A tiny difference in temps between bottles in storage can affect the yeasties, speed them up or slow them down. Like if you store them in a closet against a warm wall, the beers closest to the heat source may be a tad warmer than those further way, so thy may carb/condition at slightly different rates. I usually store a batch in 2 seperate locations in my loft 1 case in my bedroom which is a little warmer, and the other in the closet in the lving room, which being in a larger space is a tad cooler, at least according to the thermostat next to that closet. It can be 5-10 degrees warmer in my bedroom. So I usually start with that case at three weeks. Giving the other half a little more time. Each one is it's own little microcosm, and although generally the should come up at the same time, it's not an automatic switch, and they all pop on. They are all going to come to tempo when their time is right...not a minute before, and then at some point they all will be done.
So you're not, to me learning anything special from it. But It's your beer, but there's not gonna be anything right or wrong at that point, except that you're out a beer that 2-3 weeks later you're gonna post something like"Sigh, they always say that last beer of the batch is the best, now if only I hadn't "sampled for educational purposes" all those weeks back I could be having another on of these delicious beers."
But it's your beer. There's not one right way to do things, or one right philosophy brewing, it's whatever works for you. *shrug*
Just new brewers, if you do open one at 2 weeks, or 1 week, or 1 day, and it's not carbed or tastes funny, don't start a thread to ask for re-assurance that your beer will "be okay." Because that's why we point out that it takes usually a minimum of three weeks for most beers to do their thing. And just because, you don't heed that, it doesn't mean your situation is any different than the thousands of brewers who start those thread. And don't expect us to rub your belly and tell you it's going to be alright because in your gut, you KNOW the truth; We don't tell new brewers to wait just to yank their chains and tell them to wait because we're being mean...it's because we know how long it tends to take, and we want you to enjoy your beer.....every last bottle of it.
