Maximum fermentation time?

What would be considered the maximum amount of time you could let your beer ferment, whether you keep it in the fermenter or in the secondary fermenter?

Im still unsure if the beer would taste better the longer it ferments or what?

Right now i have 48 bottles of American light. right now in the carboy, i have a holiday ale. another week the holiday ale could be bottled, but i was inquiring whether i can let the beer sit longer in the carboy rather than the suggested 1 week.

Help me out guys. Thanks.

A beer ferments until it is done fermenting....That is not something you decide....the yeast eat the sugar, pees out alcohol and the beer is done fermenting.....

Now if you are asking how long you can/should leave the beer in primary you'll find that more and more recipes these days do not advocate moving after 5-7 days (which if you arbitrarily move your beer without a hydrometer reading may only mean 1-2 days of actual fermentation, not LAG TIME which is pretty common. Counting airlock bubbles is idiotic to say the least.) Now more and more recipes even in BYO advocate a minimum of 2 weeks in primary, but nowadays are even says skip secondary leave in primary for 3-4 weeks then bottle.

Many of us no longer use a secondary for normal beers, instead we opt for a long primary (90% of my beers stay in primary for a month) to let the yeast finish fermenting and the clean up the byproducts of fermentation.

Everything you need to know about that, including answering amy questions you may have about that can be found here https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/secondary-not-john-palmer-jamil-zainasheff-weigh-176837/

But if you do decide to secondary, you really should wait til fermentation is complete, and even a little longer to get some benefit from the yeast's desire to clean up the byproducts of fermentation that lead to off flavors. I recommend not racking to secondary for at least 14days after you pitched your yeast.

Here's some reading for you.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/second-ferm-racking-128440/#post1438252

And the discussion here, https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/multiple-questions-about-secondary-fermentation-140978/#post1601829

ahh. thanks for the info. what i have stuck it my head is whiskey or something, the longer it ages the better it tastes.

Could you do any harm to the beer if let it sit even after fermentation is done?

For example, this holiday ale i have, it supposed to ferment for about 6 to 7 days. After which you can keep it in there or put into the "conditioning carboy" for another week. If i didnt bottle it after that week in the carboy and let if it in there for a couple more weeks, would the beer go bad to just sit there and take up space?

Did you read the links I gave you...The first one covers that in depth.

one more thing, when i primed one of my beers before bottling, i forgot to mix the priming sugar with hot water and instead just poured it into the beer and stirred it up.

will that harm anything?




(im reading it right now Revvy Thank you!)

brewd00d said:

one more thing, when i primed one of my beers before bottling, i forgot to mix the priming sugar with hot water and instead just poured it into the beer and stirred it up.

will that harm anything?

Click to expand...

Probably not. I did the same thing once before and had no problems.