Omahawk

Recipes 

Conditioning question:

Once primary / attenuation fermenting is complete and verified with hydrometer, are there going to be substantive taste differences between leaving it in a carboy (whether or not you choose to rack to a secondary) or relying almost entirely on bottle conditioning for your secondary? I assume there are some beer clarity benefits to leaving your beer in a secondary longer prior to bottling.

I'm asking because I have a my first big beer in primary right now (a 1.086 O.G. IIPA) and thinking ahead to dryhopping / bottling schedule. I am currently planning to just let the beer sit in my better bottle for two months, rack it to a bottling bucket with a dry hop bag for 3-4 days, then bottle it (assuming I'll be bottle conditioning for 4-8 weeks). If there is no conditioning benefit to leaving it in the better bottle that long, I'll move my schedule up by a month like I would for a smaller beer and leave it in bottles for a longer period of time (8+ weeks?).

Thanks.

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Soperbrew

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I'd vote for bottling after the dry hop period. A concern I'd have is with the large headspace of a bucket, your beer will be exposed to quite a bit of oxygen during the intended dry hop phase.

If you don't have a secondary carboy you may want to just dry hop in the primary for those few days instead of racking to the bucket.

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Omahawk

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Thanks for the advice - I do not yet have a 5 gal carboy / BB, and probably can dry hop easily with bag in my 6 gal primary BB. My batch is a 5.3ish gallon in 6 gallon container - hoping to get a full 5 gallons for bottling.

I'm really wondering if it matters if I:

a) Bottle after 4 weeks and just leave it in the bottles longer.
b) Bottle after 8 weeks and need probably less time for bottle conditioning.

Again, it's a 1.086 OG so it will probably need more time for overall conditioning.

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In Heaven there is no beer
That's why we drink it here
And when we're all gone from here
Our friends will be drinking all the beer.

Boar Beer

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I vote to bottle after 4 weeks.
Then get your better bottle back into the system.

I also think you will be controlling the conditioning in a better way in the bottles
others may disagree

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Omahawk

Recipes 

Hell yeah. Getting the BB back into rotation is my biggest argument for Scenario A.

__________________
In Heaven there is no beer
That's why we drink it here
And when we're all gone from here
Our friends will be drinking all the beer.