Just What's Going on When Bottle Conditioning?

Noob, here, with a total of seven or eight batches under my belt (just look, they're all right there...).

I bottle, never have kegged. Right now just bottle the 22oz-ers, as I like a real glass of beer when I sit down to have one - bought some nice big beer glasses just for that purpose.

Now here is my question: Besides just carbonating, what is going on as the beer "conditions"? What mellows the hops "edge"? Just what is going on in there?

I enjoy tasting the beers as they age - some, like my stout are wonderful from day one, and some others like a recent IPA took two months to really mellow out.

So, we ain't just carbonating, but what the heck else is going on in that bottle? And do I lose something by going to kegging with forced CO2?

Just trying to understand what this part of the process is, and maybe how to predict where its going.

I find it odd that your stouts taste fine from day one but not your IPA. It should be exactly the opposite. My stouts take 3-4 months to get good. My IPAs I drink as fresh as possible.

Either way.... when you bottle condition, it's basically like an extended secondary fermentation. It gives the yeast a little extra time to clean up off flavors and help the flavors meld.

The people over in the brew science forum would be able to give you all the gory details but there are actually a lot of processes going on at once. As Suthrncomfrt said it is like an extended secondary fermentation, so if you are force carbing but you have given your beer several weeks/months then it matters a lot less how long you let the beer carbonate.

Any diacetyl in the beer is absorbed back into the yeasts which removes any buttery taste from the beer. Similarly, during fermentation yeasts dump out various enzymes and other byproducts which will break down or be reabsorbed by the yeasts after fermentation completes. That all helps to eliminate off flavors.

Some of the byproducts are fatty acids that combine with ethanol to form esters. The fatty acids generally have undesirable flavors while ester flavors are generally desired in several beers styles (e.g. Belgian, some English).

I believe the carbonic acid (carbonation) also affects some of those byproducts and helps change their flavor components and breakdown/conversion into other chemicals.

I speculate that some of those processes are slowed down or possibly stopped by the cold temperatures force carbed kegs are kept in while serving. Anything you are losing by force kegging is more likely from quickly bringing the beer into a cold environment as opposed to letting the carbonation set in slowly.

y

Suthrncomfrt1884 said:

I find it odd that your stouts taste fine from day one but not your IPA. It should be exactly the opposite.

Click to expand...

I thought the same exact thing when I read that. I've brewed an oatmeal stout and a chocolate cherry stout that were not good beers before at least 2 months in the bottle.

mikeysab said:

y

I thought the same exact thing when I read that. I've brewed an oatmeal stout and a chocolate cherry stout that were not good beers before at least 2 months in the bottle.

Click to expand...

Maybe you have different taste expectations for you stouts. Not everyone's tastes run the same. Why, I've heard some people love Bud Lite, the only beer I've ever dumped down the drain.

RM-MN said:

Maybe you have different taste expectations for you stouts. Not everyone's tastes run the same. Why, I've heard some people love Bud Lite, the only beer I've ever dumped down the drain.

Click to expand...

I actually have a taster for stouts. By that I mean I have been drinking them, a wide variety, for way longer than I have been brewing. But this one spent about two weeks in primary, and 6 in secondary. Maybe that helps?

My IPA's tend to taste like I am eating raw hops till they've been in the bottle a while.

I have an amber that I bottled at the same time as the stout, which I hopped like an IPA, and it tastes wonderful, but just hasn't carbed.

I guess I'll look over at the other site and see what the science nerds (I are one) are saying. It did seem strange that the stout was good so fast, so maybe it'll be really good in a couple of months if it lasts that long.