KungPao

Recipes 

I've tried my best to do a little reading up on this before positing questions, but most of the information I've come across is in reference to conditioning in the sense of carbonating your beer. I'm very new to home brewing and only have a few batches under my belt. I recently kegged and force carbonated a pale ale that had been in primary for 2 weeks. Its not completely carbonated yet but the small sample I took tasted a little off. Not off in the sense of spoiled, but more like the flavors weren't quite melded together or mature enough yet. My questions are as follows;

- for low gravity beers what seems to be proper time to condition before serving

- should I be conditioning in my fermenting fridge at lower temps or is it possible to bring these inside at room temperature? (can get a lil warm here in TX but not higher than 80F)

- in order to free up some primarys is it possible to transfer to keg and condition the beer with out the keg being on gas?


Thanks in advance.

heckels

Recipes 

I personally like to let them sit for at least a month. If possible, 2 weeks primary, 2 weeks secondary. Wheat beers you can typically get away with less. I tend to carb them after 2 weeks in the primary.

And yes, you can condition in the keg in either the fridge or at room temp. Typically you want to hit the keg with 20 psi and purge to get the O2 out of the headspace and seat the lid. Note that depending on what was still in suspension your first couple glasses could be kinda cloudy using this method unless you rack to yet another keg.

audger

Recipes 

for beers that dont require secondary-ing (like hefeweisens, other cloudy beers, or primarys that dont have a lot of junk in them), i normally let the fermentation finish and then throw it in a keg. hook it up to CO2 and leave it at room temp for 1-4 weeks (normally around 2). then chill it for 2 weeks under gas to carbonate.

as long as fermentation is finished, you can immediately hook it up to gas. some people dont like to age or condition beer under pressure, but CO2 prevents a lot of bacterial growth. also some of my corney keg lids need a shot of pressure to seal completely. a leaky lid means there is a hole that germs and oxygen can get into. at minimum you should flush the headspace with CO2 a few times after filling a keg, even if you dont need pressure to seal your lid.

if you only put a little pressure into it to seal the lid, that gas will disolve into the beer and drop the pressure, which can then let the lid continue to leak, then all your CO2 is gone. this is why i keep mine hooked up to gas whenever not fully carbonated.